


and i’m not alone anymore.

by LLReid



Series: kamilah’s forever. [1]
Category: Bloodbound (Visual Novels)
Genre: Abusive Relationship Recovery, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety, Canon LGBTQ Character, Childbirth, Domestic Bliss, Domestic Fluff, Dysfunctional Family, Epic Battles, F/F, Families of Choice, Family Feels, Ferals, Fluff and Angst, Guilt, Hormones, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Character of Color, LGBTQ Female Character, LGBTQ Themes, Parenthood, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Soulmates, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pregnancy, Pregnant Sex, Psychic Abilities, Psychic Bond, Romantic Soulmates, Same-Sex Marriage, Soulmates, Sparring, This has been requested a lot, This was literally meant to be three chapters long and it spiralled oops, Tier 4 Lockdown has me writing 24/7 send help omg, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Training, Vampire Children, Vampires, pregnancy fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:34:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 82,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27733138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LLReid/pseuds/LLReid
Summary: Each chapter is inspired by a different song.~~~~~“I told you so the minute we found out we were pregnant!,” Anastasia giggled as Kamilah kissed her lips. “I had a feeling!”“I don’t even know why I questioned it!,” she laughed, resting her brow against hers as her eyes watered. “You’re bloody psychic and— god. I can’t believe it. Twins!”Anastasia smiled and brushed her cheek with her thumb. She’d been doing that to her since the beginning of them. She’d done it the first time she ever kissed her. She loved the gesture.“Just like you and Lysimachus.”
Relationships: Kamilah Sayeed/Anastasia Sayeed, Kamilah Sayeed/Main Character (Bloodbound)
Series: kamilah’s forever. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2108751
Comments: 127
Kudos: 132





	1. look at our kids now they’re wearing your smile, they’ve got your beautiful eyes.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter inspired by; One Of A Kind (Orchestral Version) by Ronan Keating & Emeli Sandé.

Unbelievable, Kamilah thought to herself.

Bloody unbelievable.

Two five-year-olds held her and her wife captive in a fort made out of pillows and blankets where they could do nothing but listen, mesmerised by their litany of observations, opinions, and requests, and — as bizarre as it seemed to her — she found herself enraptured by their abstract thoughts about their new favourite book about a rainbow fish. 

Their daughter, Zahra, even gave her quite the disgusted look, too, with that last bit when she’d had the audacity to question the educational properties of such literature to her wife. It was a look that she knew all too well, as she’d seen it on the face of her wife far too many times for her to count. It was a look that said something along the lines of, “What in the hell is wrong with you?” And really, Kamilah had to agree with her five-year-old logic, too. A hell of a lot was wrong with her if she could not appreciate said rainbow fish for what it was, instead of focusing on the fact she was picking up an extremely gay vibe from all the rainbows in the book.

She really had been dragged along to one too many Pride parades for her own good.

There was literally no going back now.

She couldn’t see a rainbow and think of anything other than the month of June and mortals dressed like clowns.

“Uncle Adrian says bayonets are better weapons than daggers but they’re not,” their son, Jax, lamented whilst inspecting the golden hilt of King Tut’s meteorite dagger. It was a family favourite. Kamilah’s because of the rarity of the materials used to craft it and because it had been a wedding gift from Annie, and their children’s because they both enjoyed her retellings of the ancient stories of how it came from the sky. 

Anastasia shot her a bemused glance that she decoded with no trouble at all. It was a look that said “this is all you”. A look that brought a smile to her face because their children’s appreciation for beautifully crafted blades was indeed all her.

Kamilah huffed in amusement and ruffled their son’s dark hair, pressing a kiss to his crown. Jax was an uncommonly thoughtful and sensitive boy, who had inherited some of Anastasia’s psychic abilities. He may have had dark hair but he had inherited Anastasia’s glacial blue eyes that seemed to pierce the soul with a single glance. Like his namesake he was already training in Akeyo Kwangi’s style of combat — at only five he was already becoming an honourable warrior his Uncle Jax would’ve been proud of. 

Their little boy was introverted like Kamilah but was more on the benevolent side of antisocial than she was. He didn’t mind people, but he’d prefer not to have a lot of them around. He even loved cats like his Uncle Lysimachus had once, and carried around a stuffed animal that looked very similar to his uncle’s boyhood pet — that he had named Almaty after Anastasia’s hometown. And much to Kamilah’s delight, he had inherited Anastasia’s natural curiosity about everything and her love of learning — and he was also just as terrible a liar as she was, the moment he even thought about lying he began laughing uncontrollably.

It was really much too adorable — and damn near impossible to be mad at him whenever he tried it.

“Uncle Adrian doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He only likes them because he used one in the American revolutionary war.” She spoke softly, gently guiding his finger along the flat part of the freshly polished blade to be sure he wouldn’t cut himself. “But a bayonet is a lazy mans weapon and can’t come from space.”

“You can’t sneak attack with it,” Zahra stated matter of factly, jabbing her little fists sharply in a combination Kamilah had taught her whilst teaching her to defend herself in hand to hand combat.

She and Anastasia both laughed softly. Were this anybody else’s spawn that statement might’ve been so disturbing it would prompt a call to Child Protective Services. However, no child of theirs was going to have a ‘normal’ set of interests — and Kamilah had made damn sure that they both knew how to fight better than most fully grown vampires. To her, making sure they knew how to be prepared for everything and anything was an extremely important part of parenting — as children had never been very good at listening to their elders, but they never failed to imitate them.

The Bloodkeeper confirmed that a bayonet would indeed be very difficult to sneak attack an enemy with and gently ran her slender fingers through Zahra’s long ginger hair — which at their highly opinionated daughter’s request, was basically a mirror image of hers.

Zahra had inherited most of Anastasia’s physical features — her petiteness included. Her name was an Egyptian one that Kamilah had adored since her own childhood meaning: flower. It seemed especially fitting, as their little girl was already quite the rose. At only five, she was just as highly opinionated and particular about almost everything as Kamilah was but she was every bit as extroverted as Anastasia — which made her the natural leader between her and her brother. It wasn’t unusual for her to wander the halls of Ahmanet or Raines Corp with a piece of paper that she liked to draw check marks on, which made their employees nervous because nobody had any idea what she was observing and she already cast a presence in any given room very similar to that of Kamilah’s — all anybody knew was that she’d very likely be a formidable force in the boardroom one day.

She had been spared the burden of inheriting any Bloodkeeper abilities — much to both of their delight — but she had developed the same love of swords and daggers that Kamilah had in her own girlhood, which meant she was perfectly capable of defending herself. Zahra often shunned traditionally ‘girly’ toys to play with toy swords or lightsabers, which was especially comical because she insisted upon wearing a dress and sparkly ballet pumps every single day — regardless of the occasion — and often accessorised her outfits with plastic tiaras or brightly coloured hair bows that she considered the height of fashion. She walked around Manhattan like a miniature version of the Blair Waldorf character from one of Anastasia’s favourite TV shows, but with some very, very blunt daggers in her miniature purses.

It was far too amusing.

“Can you sneak attack with a sword?,” Jax asked.

“No because they’re big,” Zahra responded, “but you can with a lightsaber.”

“They’re not real.”

Zahra turned to Anastasia. “Mommy, can you make lightsabers at Raines Corp?”

“I want a red one like Kylo Ren but I’m not a bad boy.” Jax took a sip out of the blood bag in his hand. “I just like red so it matches my vampire eyes.”

“Then we can be vampire Jedi’s!,” Zahra beamed, flashing her tiny little milk fangs that would soon fall out and be replaced with the ones she’d have for the rest of her life.

Kamilah buried her face in Anastasia’s shoulder to conceal her amusement as their children were, in fact, being entirely serious. Lightsabers. They wished for lightsabers. 

This was all Lily Spencer’s doing.

They’d entrusted beloved Auntie Lily to babysit for one weekend so they could celebrate their anniversary and had come home from London to a family of Star Wars fanatics dressed like Storm Troopers. Their children had been beating the hell out of each other with plastic lightsabers and Jax had been using his psychic abilities like the force to fly his sister around the living room. 

It was a wonder that nobody had broken a fang.

And Adrian and Serafine were now the only ones permitted to babysit for more than a few hours at a time.

Having children, Kamilah had very quickly come to learn, was what she imagined it must be like living in a frat house. Nobody had a consistent sleep schedule. Something was always getting broken. Blood bags were always being spilled. There were a lot of tears and a lot of throwing up. But there was also more joy than she knew what to do with. Lots of laughter. Affection. Silly moments that often brought tears to her eyes from the strength of her laughter.

“Lightsabers,” Anastasia giggled. “It might take me a few decades but I’ll get right on that. What do you think, Kami, do you think I can do it?”

“Yeah, Mama, what do you think?,” Jax prodded excitedly.

“Well I know you can do it, mommy,” Zahra said sweetly, smiling when Anastasia kissed her forehead.

Kamilah hummed, pretending to mull over her answer. “Well if you do, you’d better give me the first one. Preferably double ended one — in the name of practicality, you understand.”

Anastasia snorted and playfully nudged her arm. “For someone who claims not to enjoy Star Wars, you certainly know a lot about the weapons.”

“It— You—“ She couldn’t refute that with anything, as Anastasia knew that she did indeed enjoy the films more than she’d let on. So she stuffed her mouth with some gummy bears and rolled her eyes, which only made their children start laughing hysterically.

Her ancient heart seemed permanently lodged in her throat in moments like these when the high pitched sound of childish laughter echoed through the once completely silent penthouse, where she’d once lived alone for decades. That very same lonely place was now a family home that was full of love and laughter, and Kamilah loved her family more dearly than life itself. 

God only knew why the wonderful woman in her arms had fallen in love with her enough to give her this, because she sure as hell didn’t know what she’d ever done to deserve such peace, but she knew exactly why she loved her. Anastasia was her beacon in the darkness, and their children her compass on a stormy night sea. When she was with them, she did not want to dance with Death. She wanted to dance with Life. She wanted to dance with them. And whatever it took, she meant to spend the rest of her immortal life trying to deserve them — trying to be a woman that they would be proud to have as a wife and a mother.

She hadn’t even realised it before, but there really were places in the heart a person didn’t even know existed until they loved a child — and she’d somehow fallen even deeper in love with her wife watching her bring these two angels into the world. She hadn’t thought that would even be possible, but there it was. 

It was indeed very, very possible.

~~~~ five years earlier ~~~~

When Kamilah and her wife had first began discussing the idea of having children it had been nothing more than a pipe dream. As for much longer than the ancient vampire had been alive, vampires had been infertile creatures of the night. Created by death alone. 

She never imagined that things would ever change. 

That a vampire could be born out of love and the desire to live a good life, rather than an unforgivable act of brutality... it was a mystifying thought.

But if there was one thing she’d learned in her life, it was that things rarely ever happened as she thought that they would.

So when Anastasia had made the game changing scientific breakthrough at Raines Corp that would allow their kind to conceive as a mortal would, hundreds of vampires the world over had practically leapt at the opportunity to grab ahold of the dreams they’d abandoned upon their Turning. And now there were many individuals in the world below the age of ten who’d been born a vampire, who would grow and mature parallel to their mortal counterparts until the age of twenty and then stop, who seemed just as healthy and happy and innocent as most children in the world were.

Kamilah’s only request throughout it all had been that Anastasia not be the first to undergo the procedure. After Lily had gotten her drunk enough to convince her to watch the horrendous Twilight Saga movies it had become more of a demand — and several complete anxious breakdowns that had ended with her in near hysterical floods of tears and Anastasia hyperventilating — than a request. She just loved her so much she knew the fear. She’d heard others speak about it before meeting her, she’d read about it in books. Now she understood it. The fear that a person has when they finally gave their heart away to another person. It made you very vulnerable to loss. If a person had never loved anyone like this, then they’d never understand — she’d held Anastasia as she died once before and if something happened to her again it would do much more than simply kill her, it would shatter her entire being irreparably. She simply could not face a life without her.

But now that she knew the award winning technology was extremely safe and wouldn’t harm her beloved, her anxieties had faded. She’d witnessed many vampiric pregnancies in her Clan and branded many an infant with her blood a week after their births, and had even served as godmother to a few loyal underlings’ children.

And now it was finally their turn to expand their family.

“You really are spoiling me, you know,” Anastasia giggled as she languidly sat up in bed, soft, and happy, and glowing. The whispered words spoken with sleepy sensuality had Kamilah’s insides fluttering. There were no words to describe her, nor were there ones she could coherently form in the moment; she was a work of art, and she found herself driven rather speechless.

She proudly glanced down at the breakfast she’d just made for her after another successful FaceTime cooking lesson from Adrian. An iced decaf chai tea made with coconut milk and a bowl of oatmeal with a generous amount of B-Positive blood swirled in it. Vampire pregnancy cravings were no joke and almost always involved a very specific type of blood, as pregnant vampires required much more blood than they normally would — and almost always developed a severe aversion to feeding from the vein for the duration of their pregnancy for some odd reason nobody had been able to pinpoint yet.

She chuckled an pressed a kiss to her brow. “You have been carrying my child for almost eight weeks now, my love. You deserve to be waited on hand and foot, so you ought to get used to it.”

Kamilah really had been doing everything she could to support her in this. Despite having read many pregnancy books she was not yet a wealth of general pregnancy information, but she was a wealth of Anastasia information. She knew absolutely everything about her and probably knew her more intimately than anyone else in this world — which meant she understood and could sympathise with her current neediness very well. She also loved her more than anyone else in this world. So, whilst she may not have had the answers of how to ease morning sickness or how to soothe the psychic sensory overloads that had been happening more frequently thanks to the changes in her body, she was the perfect person to turn to when she needed anything — be it as out of her comfort zone as some bizarre food combination that seemed downright disgusting to most people, or as unusual for her usual temperament as a tearful mood swing over something small, or even if she just needed a hand to hold. 

She was there for her, no matter what, and she loved having her like this. Wanting to take care of her and knowing stubborn Anastasia was going to let her. Kamilah really didn’t need a lot in life to be happy. Just her love and the acceptance of hers along with her care.

Anastasia smiled gratefully and took a bit of her breakfast, then nodded approvingly. “S’good.”

She lay herself back down on the mattress propped up on one elbow at her side, her other hand rested on her lower stomach. She wasn’t showing enough yet that anybody else could tell that she was pregnant but Kamilah was so familiar with her body that she had begun to notice the beginnings of a bump forming, and it was the most adorable thing she’d ever seen.

“The app says our baby is the size of a blueberry this week,” Kamilah commented.

“A blueberry— speaking of blueberries, are you not eating, babe?,” Anastasia asked between mouthfuls of her breakfast.

“I may or may not have consumed an entire bag of gummy bears whilst I was preparing your breakfast — the non alcoholic ones, of course.” 

Whilst she didn’t have to avoid alcohol and Anastasia certainly didn’t expect it of her, she had made the decision not to drink. Pregnancy seemed designed to prepare them for life as mothers, she thought. You started making sacrifices nine months before the child was born, so by the time they put in an appearance you were used to giving things up for them. 

She also wanted to make absolutely certain she was vigilant and attentive to everything at all times. Even though Anastasia was the most powerful vampire in existence the world was full of dangers now that she was pregnant: immortal enemies, mercury in tuna, hot tubs, alcohol, caffeine, peanuts, too much physical activity, stress, secondhand smoke, and over-the-counter medicine just to name a few — and Kamilah intended to protect her love and her unborn child from everything and everyone that would dare pose a threat to their safety. She would walk into hell itself to keep them both safe.

“You ate a whole bag of gummy bears?,” Anastasia smiled. “Kami. You absolute dork.”

“My addiction to these mortal snacks is becoming a problem.” She feigned a sigh. “I do not know how I lived for two thousand years without trying them. However, I feel I am making up for lost time without actually setting out to do so. I intended to have one and then the next thing I knew the entire bag had disappeared... and now I’m so close to being out of gummy bears I had to text Mathew to buy me more.”

Was this what happily married people had always did? She found herself wondering. Cuddled and talked in shadowed rooms, gave each other bodily warmth and gentle caresses as they exchanged confidences?

Anastasia giggled softly and stroked her hair. “Imagine if our kid likes them as much as you do.”

A small smile tugged at the corners of her lips and she leaned in to press a kiss against her stomach before shifting so that she was laying with her head rested on her lap, her forehead rested against her belly. “That would be ideal. We could bribe them into behaving with gummy bears the way my minders used to bribe me with the promise of new weapons.”

Anastasia snorted and gently stroked back the little wispy hairs framing her temple. “But if they’re psychic like me they could just float your gummy bears to their hands whenever they want.”

Her eyes widened at the very idea. “Then in that case I’d better hide my gummy bears very well and ensure I have an adequate supply. You know how I get when there are no gummy bears on which I can snack.”

“Hangry,” Anastasia nodded.

They shared a laugh at that and Kamilah pressed another kiss to her stomach, her lips grazing the sliver of her skin peeking out between her tank top and shorts.

Despite only being eight weeks in, they’d already created a morning routine that would give them far more time at home before having to go to work. Kamilah would diligently hold back Anastasia’s waist length hair as the morning sickness hit, because even when it was tied back it was still pretty much down and was so thick that it frequently fell out of buns. They’d lay in bed and she’d cuddle her close until she felt able to eat, and then Kamilah would personally see to it that she had whatever she happened to be craving — it didn’t matter if she wanted pizza for breakfast or an entire New York cheesecake... she would find a way to get her it. And they’d take their sweet time getting ready, their work phones ignored unless a life or death emergency happened at the office that needed their immediate attention.

Kamilah had grown to love these lazy mornings, as they meant that they could be awake for longer during the night between Monday and Friday. She didn’t even care that many of her employees were confused by her sudden sporadic appearances at the office, as they’d all find out the reason soon enough and the ridiculous gossip would stop. So far she’d heard many of the rumours but the most common belief was that she and Anastasia were heading for the multi-billion dollar divorce of the century — which was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard, even by mortal standards it seemed all too bizarre to believe that anyone was actually dimwitted enough to think that. 

Knowing that Anastasia loved her was not a source of amusement — it was her salvation. But she had learned long ago that when you were rich and powerful, no one would challenge you to your face or give you a chance to explain yourself on your own time. All the whispers were behind your back. You were left with no means of clearing your own name. And after a while you realised there was no point in even attempting to do so. No one actually wanted the truth, as mortals were simply just nosy creatures by nature. All they wanted was the chance to add more fuel to the fires of gossip. The whispers became so loud that sometimes she imagined cutting out their tongues to silence them forever — it was a rather therapeutic source of entertainment.

However, on this day when they had a doctors appointment, there wasn’t much time to luxuriate in bed... even though it was a Saturday. But Kamilah was just so thankful not to have to tolerate any of her ridiculous mortal employees that she didn’t even grudge being awake at such an ungodly hour.

They never usually saw the sun at all on the weekends... but seeing their unborn child seemed like more than an equal toss up.

Anastasia almost toppled out of bed when it came time for her to get up and she had to grab hold of her waist to keep her from falling. "Centre of gravity is off, huh?,” she murmured, doing her best not to chuckle because she was a little more irritable than normal.

"Maybe just a little — and I’m not even big yet!," Anastasia conceded with a huff. She helped steady her and she strolled towards the bathroom. "Seriously, if I spend any more time peeing I'm going to move in here permanently."

"Practical,” she nodded whilst slipping into a pair of black skinny jeans, “but I don't think you'd enjoy taking your tea in there, my love.”

“I feel gross today,” Anastasia said after a moment from the bathroom.

Kamilah perked up at that and wandered towards the bathroom whilst pulling her black t-shirt over her head. “What do you mean?”

“Just... I don’t know, gross.” Anastasia laughed as she dragged her hairbrush through her hair. “My boobs hurt, I’m tired, exhausted, a little bit swollen, achy, and weak.”

She wrapped her arms around her from behind and kissed the back of her head. “What can I do to make it easier?”

Anastasia turned around and buried her face in her shoulder, sighing softly. “Just hug me.”

“Is this all you want, Annie?” She brought her arms around her and urged her to lean further into her. “Merely an embrace?”

“It isn’t merely an embrace,” she replied, loving the feel of her lean muscles and long bones against her body. “It is your embrace, and your scent, and the cadence of your breathing, and the warmth of your hands. To me — to us — there is nothing mere about it.”

“Us,” she murmured, smiling softly. “You and the baby?”

“Mhm,” Anastasia nodded, her glacial eyes blazing wildly into hers. She was her greatest gift. She was the first person to really see inside of her. Only her eyes seemed even capable of doing it. Only her Annie’s eyes. “We’re really lucky you’re ours, you know.”

Her heart fluttered at that and she caressed her hair. We. Ours. She liked that statement far too much for her own good. She wanted her to know how happy she was at this stage of their lives… because she’d been blessed with the rare and precious gift… of loving her. But there were no words she knew to accurately do the feeling justice. So she squeezed her tightly and sighed happily and turned her face into the Bloodkeeper’s shoulder, and they stayed like that for a long time.

“I haven’t been inside a hospital since the beginning Italian Renaissance period,” Kamilah laughed nervously as she walked at Anastasia’s side with a hand rested protectively in the small of her back, the other ready to grab her concealed daggers should anyone dare get too close. She was carrying six now — a pair, a spare, and a spare pair — and so many poisons she was certain she was a public health hazard to mortals, just to be absolutely certain she could protect her family. To everyone but her wife, her face was hard, a warrior's mask that just dared them to try something. Waves of determination and aggression lapped about her where anyone else was concerned, and only a fool would dare so much as look at the mother of her child the wrong way.

It was the smell that hit her finely attuned senses first the moment they walked into the hospital lobby. It was a sterile, antiseptic and very distinctive medical smell, a smell with an underlying mix of latex and the metallic aroma of blood beneath it — diseased blood, bagged blood, and blood flowing out of fresh wounds. Disturbing as this was, she wasn’t necessarily shocked. It was a hospital, after all.

“When your lover — Arabella? — was diagnosed with tuberculosis?”

“Indeed. Arabella,” she nodded. “It appears mortal hospitals have changed a great deal since then.”

Anastasia laughed lightly and gave her a smile. “I have so many terrible memories in hospitals because of the defect I was born with in my heart. I literally grew up in a household where we didn't really talk about our feelings, and where the only reason we ever went to a doctor was because someone had accidentally cut off a limb with a chain saw or I was basically nearing a cardiac arrest.”

She shuddered at the mere thought. “I can’t even imagine that. Though I suspect the most respected medical doctors in my own childhood would be considered nothing more than showy magicians one would expect to see performing in Times Square nowadays.”

“Literally, my very first memory is being held down screaming in pain having wires with little electrodes on them that were literally touching my heart torn out of a surgical wound in my chest at the age of two.” Anastasia cringed. “And the old school doctors who’d all trained in soviet times were all screaming at me to be still because I was making their job difficult.”

Sensing she was nervous and understanding why after having heard the stories of her early childhood sickness and everything she’d been through to render it harmless, she pressed a soothing kiss to her temple. “I don’t understand why the fertility treatments could be given at Raines Corp but the prenatal care must be given at a hospital.”

“It’s just easier and safer. All the nurses and doctors are here, so are the midwives, and all the equipment they need— and any specialists that we could ever need.” 

Mortal medicine certainly had transformed tremendously since Kamilah’s last run in with it, but one thing that hadn’t changed was what a fascinating mix a hospital could be of people in a huge hurry and people too slow to get out of their way. Centuries ago you knew that most hospitals were not any kind of place that cured, but a place that held, that kept their patients away from the rest of the world until they died, a kind of ark that floated along full of life, but not participating in life — people that no longer made progress.

Even now hospitals had become nicer and the medical science more exact, hospitals were still uneasy places for vampires to be. The beeping of so many machines and the combination of grief and joy were a deafening symphony and it seemed like every room was somehow as cold as a corpse’s skin, the hallways crowded with fragile souls and reeking of illness and toxic medicines.

“Know what’s weird?,” Anastasia giggled to her as the nurse left the room after checking her vital signs and withdrawing a few vials of blood from a vein — which had not been an easy process at all as her body began healing and expelling the needle much too quickly after every stick to fill an entire vial. She’d been poked twelve times and seemed completely unfazed by it, whereas Kamilah couldn’t even watch what the nurse had been doing without her heart aching a little. Anastasia’s pain was her pain.

“No.” She kissed her hair. “Enlighten me.”

“In the lobby it said the orthopaedic ward and the geriatric ward were both on the top floor. Thats where mortals with broken legs and arthritis are, right? But am I the only one who thinks it’s a silly place to put people with bad bones who have such trouble walking and climbing stairs?”

She actually laughed at that. It wasn’t even necessarily that funny, it was just a very Anastasia thing to say. “Indeed, now that you mention it I can’t not think that.”

“It just seems really dumb, right? It’d be like... like putting the ward for people with a food addiction getting that band thing on their stomach to make them lose weight in a place were they could see a McDonalds from the window.” She shook her head in dismay. “It’s cruel.”

“I love you,” she sighed happily, standing at the side of the table and resting her chin on the crown of her head after pressing a kiss to her hair. “And I hope that our blueberry sized baby says these wonderful things that you do.”

“So you’re hoping my extraness is genetic?,” Anastasia giggled.

“Indeed.” She stroked a hand through her hair, listening contently to the steady beating of her heart. When she spoke again, her voice was hardly even a whisper, “Please, don’t ever let me go.”

Anastasia held her close with her arms around her waist. “Sweetheart, not a chance. I love you very much.”

When their OBGYN came into the room to begin the scan and run through the routine questions Kamilah continued to hold Anastasia’s hand, knowing that even nice doctors and nurses made her nervous — even ones who were clearly a little star struck to be in their presence.

It was such a bizarre job, she thought to herself as the lights in the room were dimmed and some freezing cold gel was smeared across her wife’s abdomen. As an OBGYN, a person must meet wildly interesting people and stay up all night with them. They asked them questions about their sex lives, what food they were eating, felt inside their bodies, stayed up with them all night, listened to them screaming in agony, drank coffee at all hours, and oddest of all, they got to catch little naked, wet babies straight out of the womb. What she couldn’t understand was how they even managed to make themselves look at all presentable.

“Well everything looks exactly as I’d expect for you being eight weeks along,” their doctor said cheerily, her eyes never leaving the strange looking squiggles on the screen.

They both smiled softly, their eyes locking for a moment, and Kamilah pressed a kiss to Anastasia’s brow, never stilling the hand that was stroking her hair. 

“And when will we know if they’ve inherited Annie’s genetic heart defect?,” Kamilah asked, brushing up Anastasia’s face with the back of her fingers in a cherishing caress. “I understand as a vampire it will not pose any significant health risk and will not require the same invasive medical interventions hers did. However, we still wish to know.”

“We usually run those tests at sixteen weeks. It’s difficult to tell before then,” the doctor said, glancing at her and then her gaze settling on Anastasia. “You were diagnosed after birth though, is that right?”

Anastasia nodded. “As far as I know I was a few hours old when they found it. I’m not sure if those tests were even available in Kazakhstan when I was born.”

“Well the tests for these things have improved dramatically since 1997, and our cardiology department is one of the best in the world. We’ll know long before the little one is born.” She moved the doppler slightly to the left and her eyes widened considerably. “Oh—“

“Oh?,” Kamilah echoed, her entire body tensing.

“What is oh?,” Anastasia yelped. “What’s wrong?”

“It appears you’re having twins!,” the doctor exclaimed, pointing excitedly to two black shadows on the screen. “Congratulations, ladies.”

Both of their jaws practically hit the floor and they stared at each other, speechless for a long moment as the news set in. 

Twins. 

Two babies. 

Two. 

Anastasia’s watery laughter brought Kamilah back to planet Earth. 

Twins. 

They were having twins.

“I told you so the minute we found out we were pregnant!,” Anastasia giggled as Kamilah kissed her lips. “I had a feeling!”

“I don’t even know why I questioned it!,” she laughed, resting her brow against hers as her eyes watered. “You’re bloody psychic and— god. I can’t believe it. Twins!”

Anastasia smiled and brushed her cheek with her thumb. She’d been doing that to her since the beginning of them. She’d done it the first time she ever kissed her. She loved the gesture.

“Just like you and Lysimachus.”

Her breath caught in her throat and she kissed her again. This woman was her ray of light in a fog of ignorance and frustration and this gift that she had given her... it was more than anything she’d ever dared dream she’d ever have. She was banquet for her starving soul, who had completely owned her since she first laid eyes on her. She was lost in her and it felt so wonderful, she never wanted to be found again. Lost for forever in this moment with her and their unborn children. She could die a happy death right at this moment and she would definitely be smiling.


	2. swimming through the stars when i see her.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by; Nothing Really Matters by Mr Probz.

“There is a price for greed and violence. We do not always know who will pay it. But for good or ill, it will be paid,” Kamilah instructed as she adjusted Zahra’s grip on her daggers and guided her little hands in a brand new combination, piercing the body of one of the state of the art practice dummies Anastasia had made at Raines Corp that now stood proudly in the dojo. “If you ever have to fight, you do so with everything you have in you. You do not doubt, you do not hesitate, you do not falter. You are the Bloodkeeper’s daughter, and you have the Bloodkeeper’s strength — and my ability to think on your feet. You do what you must to save yourself and the people around you.”

“Yes, Mama,” Zahra beamed, her brow furrowing in concentration.

Adults had been constantly raising the bar on smart children for thousands of years, precisely because they were able to handle it. But both Kamilah and Anastasia had been exceptionally gifted children once and knew that children got overwhelmed by the tasks in front of them and gradually lost the sort of openness and sense of accomplishment they innately had if they were pushed too hard. When they were treated like that, children started to crawl inside a shell and kept everything inside. It took a lot of time and effort to get them to open up again. Kids' hearts were malleable, but once they gelled up it was hard to get them back the way they were... so it was a constant balancing act between training them too much and just enough that they could protect themselves.

Kamilah had not even realised it before, but perhaps it took a great deal of courage to raise children.

“There is only one way to fight, and that's dirty. Clean gentlewomanly fighting will get you nowhere but dead, and fast. Take every cheap shot, every low blow, absolutely kick an enemy when they're down, and maybe you'll be the one who walks away.”

“My fangs are pointy and my blades are sharper, Mama. Don’t worry.” Zahra cast her a smirk that was all Anastasia, pointing at her little fangs. “Only a foolish mortal would dare be an imbecile where I can see them.”

She snorted. 

Foolish mortals. 

Imbeciles. 

She may have to start watching her language, she realised.

Kamilah let go of her arms and crouched down to watch as she attacked the electronic dummy again. She studied her footwork, her form, everything, whilst controlling the dummy’s arms and legs from an app on her phone.

“Perfect form,” she smiled. “Just strengthen your stance a little. An enemy can trip you easily standing like that.”

“Make it harder, Mama,” Zahra smirked as she fixed her stance. “I can take him!”

Some might’ve said twice weakly training sessions at the age of five was taking things a little far, but Kamilah knew better. In her long life she had done so much wrong that if her sins were blood, she would drown in a river of her own making. She had many enemies and they would hurt her children just like they had murdered Anastasia as a mortal before her very eyes to get to her, and she was not going to let that happen.

Life as a vampire was not easy, and what an earth shattering realisation that was. 

“Are you certain?”

“I can take him,” Zahra said adamantly.

Kamilah nodded and put the dummy up a level. With rapt attention she watched as Zahra sparred with it, both taking and blocking punches. Fighting so well that she’d destroy most mortal MMA fighters in mere seconds.

When the dummy almost fell on top of her she readied herself to stop the session to show her how to prevent it next time, but halted when Zahra firmly told her not to intervene. She had thought there was absolutely no way she’d wriggle out of this, but within moments she was proven wrong.

With one strong kick she threw the dummy twenty feet into the air, right over Adrian’s head, and jumped back up into a fighting stance.

“Brilliant. Finish strong,” she ordered. “Don’t lose form.”

She hit the dummy again, harder, and launched herself into the air this time. Kamilah watched in awe as the dummy flew into the wall and their tiny little girl drew a stake she had tucked into the waistband of her pink velour shorts and slammed it into its chest.

“Instant kill!,” Zahra cheered, as she started doing an exuberant happy dance and jumping around excitedly. The lights on her sneakers after staking a dummy in the chest like that were nothing short of comedy gold as far as she was concerned. “Mama, did you see?! I staked that bitch!”

“Great job, honey!” She snorted as she barrelled into her arms. She playfully spun her in a circle whilst whispering words of encouragement and pride, remembering how it had felt when her own father had done the same with her as a girl as he’d taught her to handle a blade. “But... please refrain from saying bitch. You’re five.”

“Auntie Lily says bitch.”

She cast a withering glance towards her protégé who was doing — or trying to do — pull ups on the wall bars a few feet away. “Auntie Lily is an imbecile.”

“Damn fucking right I am, Sugar Mama Sayeed.”

“What’s a sugar mama?,” Jax interjected from where he was working on honing his psychic abilities with Anastasia and Serafine a few feet away. The moment his attention drifted from the dumbbells floating around his head they started crashing to the ground, and were it not for Serafine’s quick intervention would’ve knocked Adrian out cold for at least an hour as he did sit ups on the mats. 

A crushed skull would’ve been a rather inconvenient ending to an otherwise perfectly agreeable evening.

“Is it a mortal snack?,” Jax prodded.

“Your mommy certainly thought so,” snorted Lily.

“Lily!,” Anastasia, Kamilah, Adrian, and Serafine all said at once.

“Shit— I mean fuck— No! What the fuck— Ah!” Lily fell dramatically to the floor with the stress of trying to form a sentence that didn’t involve some kind of swear word. Both children started laughing hysterically at her and Kamilah simply rolled her eyes, casting her wife a bewildered glance. “I need a drink, y’all.”

“Mommy, did you see me stake the dummy?,” Zahra called to Anastasia as she climbed onto Kamilah’s shoulders like a little monkey and rested her chin atop her head.

“I did, baby! You did awesome!,” Anastasia beamed.

“Mama, watch this!,” Jax said, drawing Kamilah’s attention.

She watched wide eyed as their son picked up his startled Uncle Adrian using his psychic abilities. Adrian began laughing as he floated a few off of the ground around the dojo and even settled into a Superman pose, much to the children’s delight.

“Make him do a flip!,” Lily called.

And Jax did just that. Before poor Uncle Adrian realised what had hit him, he was already upside down.

“Relax your hand a little— that’s it,” Anastasia guided, gently covering his hand with hers. “You want to keep your muscles nice and loose so that the energy can flow freely. If you keep them tight you’ll exhaust yourself very quickly.”

“Like this, mommy?,” Jax murmured, the tip of his tongue coming to rest between his lips as he focused on keeping Adrian in the air.

“You’re doing wonderfully— now to set him down gently I want you to move your hand very slowly.” Anastasia watched dutifully, ready to step in at any moment, as Adrian returned to earth and the room erupted into applause.

“Magnifique!,” concluded Serafine.

“Mommy, you do a trick now!,” Zahra pleaded. 

“Yeah, mommy!,” Jax added.

“Get it, mommy!,” Lily teased.

Kamilah shot her a glance. Hearing Lily calling Anastasia mommy was much too disturbing for her liking. “Call my wife mommy one more time and I will cut out your tongue.”

“Okay, Sugar Mama Sayeed. Okay.”

She rolled her eyes.

She really ought to be awarded a sainthood after tolerating this shit for so many years.

Anastasia got up and walked to the middle of the mats and everybody watched her with rapt attention. With a deep breath she sat down with crossed legs, she closed her eyes and began to meditate, and when she opened them once again after a few moments the blue of her irises had been wiped away and replaced with a glowing red.

“Avatar State,” Lily whispered, nodding approvingly. “Classic.”

Power rippled off of Anastasia’s slender body in waves, filling the entire room, and before anyone could realise what was happening they were all floating mid air and the room seemed to melt away entirely. This was one of their children’s favourite games. They’d have Anastasia create a mental illusion to suspend them in. Most frequently she’d induce visions of deep under water kingdoms complete with mermaids and palaces built out of seashells, or far off jungles complete with exotic animals to befriend, but this time they found themselves suspended in lower Earth orbit. Surrounded by stars and looking down at the planet.

“Oh snap!,” Lily quipped. “This bitch just went extraterrestrial, you motherfuckers!”

“I told you she said bitch,” Zahra giggled as she floated in the air alongside her.

“I will allow you to eat as many of my gummy bears as you wish if you never imitate Auntie Lily’s language,” she deadpanned.

She might just throw herself headfirst from a cliff a few hundred times if either of their children ever picked up Lily’s very... unique... patterns of speaking.

Heaving a sigh, she went back to watching both of their children’s icy eyes as they widened in wonder as they did somersaults through the stars, kicking off the dojo walls to glide faster and faster through the illusion. Even Kamilah had to admit this was seriously impressive — even if Anastasia had explained to her how simple it was to produce these sort of visions. All she had to do was enter their minds and project an image whilst using her abilities to make them float, and the next thing they knew they were immersed in an alternate reality.

A smile twitched at the corners of her lips as she watched everybody marvelling at the brand new world around them, and the moment she glanced at her wife her heart began to flutter.

Anastasia was in a deep meditative state in front of her, her red hair floating around her like a fiery halo, her eyes like glowing embers piercing the dark. She was like fire and ice and rage and peace all at once. She was like the night, and the storm in the heart of the sun. Everything in perfect balance. Her powers were the most ancient things in the world and she was forever. She burnt wildly at the centre of time and she alone could see the turn of the universe. And... she was wonderful.

She kept them there for only a few moments before bringing them back to reality — and before Kamilah could even move to grab her a bag of blood both of the twins were already racing off at breakneck speed to the blood bank.

“How do you do that, ma petite?,” Serafine gasped. “Controlling one mind at a time in an illusion like that is simple but... six... the amount of power that would take—“

Anastasia simply winked at her, resting her head on Kamilah’s shoulder as she caught her breath. “The rules and limits of my abilities are best not discussed. For once we understand the illusion, we no longer believe in it.”

“That is some Wizard of Oz shit, you crazy bitch,” Lily concluded as she sprawled out like a starfish on the mats.

“That is the excitement of life," Anastasia shrugged. "The not knowing. It is often best not to know.”

They all fell into a comfortable silence as the twins returned with a fresh bag of blood for everybody to refuel with. Around them the night creatures of New York City had their say and lived their lives. They were surrounded by a symphony of vampires going about their business and mortal revellers partying the night away. None of them felt the need to speak as they fed, and Kamilah supposed that was one of the qualities she found most comforting in her family. 

They could be alone together, without ever being lonely.

And what a rare and beautiful thing that was.

~~~~ five years earlier ~~~~

How nobody had figured out Anastasia was pregnant yet, Kamilah just didn’t know. Her beloved was literally glowing and she found herself driven to the brink of insanity by her beauty. Pregnancy definitely suited her.

Something snapped in Kamilah’s mind as she saw her wife walking towards her as she stepped out of the elevator as she arrived at Ahmanet. The noise of mortals talking all around her receded in a wave until all she heard was her distant, throbbing pulse like a muffled symphony. She hadn’t the slightest idea or care about what her COO and CFO were saying to her.

“My love,” she beamed, ignoring the mortals entirely as she swept Anastasia off her feet and spun her around in a gentle circle. Every set of eyes within their vicinity locked on them and jaws hit the floor, but Kamilah didn’t care. She didn’t care a bit that this was an over the top display of public affection, even by her normal standards. This woman was carrying their children... and her adoration could know no moderation.

“Kami!,” Anastasia giggled, burying her face in her shoulder as she was returned to her feet.

“I missed you,” she said in that one tone of voice that was reserved for Anastasia alone. “We may have been apart for only hours but—“

“We missed you too,” Anastasia murmured at her ear, quiet enough that nobody else could hear. 

We.

Would she ever tire of hearing that?

Kamilah tightened her arms around her and held her for a long moment, not caring that she’d been in the middle of some other conversation when she’d arrived. The mortals could wait. 

“My angel. My beauty,” she whispered against her hair.

Every day since the first day, she had made her life worth living. She made her wake up every single day knowing that she was a blessed woman. With her, she was real. She made her real when she walked into that conference room and she had looked up to see her. She was the only one. The only person ever able to really see Kamilah, and she wanted to spend every day of the rest of her life loving her. That was all she wanted, all she needed. 

“You’ll make me cry with the hormones if you call me that,” Anastasia giggled.

Kamilah smiled and pressed a kiss between her brows. “Will asking how you are feeling trigger anything?”

“No,” laughed Anastasia. “And I’m tired... and weirdly sort of hungry—“

“There’s a mug of B-positive that I had warmed to body temperature and a bowl of egg fried rice waiting for you in my office,” she beamed. Egg fried rice was suddenly the best mortal food in the world in Anastasia’s eyes, which was amusing because she hadn’t even liked it before. Just egg fried rice on its own. Nothing else could touch it or it would ruin the entire delicacy, apparently — a fact which Kamilah highly disputed but she was smart enough not to try to convince a pregnant woman otherwise.

Anastasia’s eyes shimmered. Hormones. Bloody hormones. 

“Kami, thank you. I—“

She gave her a soft kiss and gently ushered her towards her office. “Allow me to finish here and I’ll join you in a moment, my love. Enjoy.”

“You seem even drunker on the I Love My Wife Juice than normal, Boss Lady,” Mathew commented as soon as Anastasia was out of earshot. “Whaddup with that?”

She cast the newest member of Clan Sayeed a withering glance. This fool was going to torment her for the rest of her days just like Lily Spencer and she was already utterly exhausted. “Don’t make me stake you, pup.”

“You’d miss me, Boss Lady.”

“Would I, though?” She heaved an exasperated sigh. “Would I really?”

Just having Anastasia near her put her mind at ease, for she knew both she and their children were safe and well. She’d use any means necessary — any fucking violence she had to — in order to keep her family safe. It was not bloody negotiable. She would fucking kill if it meant it’d keep them safe.

Her mind was with her every moment they were apart — even as she finished this ridiculous discussion about this year’s company holiday party with the mortals her mind was distinctly focused on her love. She wanted to be at her side every moment to dote on her and protect her. Was she enjoying her meal? Had she developed a headache this afternoon, as she had the day before? Was she nauseous? What could she do to make her feel pampered?

There was just so much to think about!

“Kami, this is the best rice I’ve ever tasted!,” Anastasia giggled as she walked into her office. “Where is this one from?”

“A Chinese restaurant down the block that sells the British version of Chinese takeaway food,” she chuckled. “Mathew brought in leftovers and it seemed slightly different than the American variant. So I thought I’d see how it landed.”

Anastasia just smiled at her and continued tucking into her snack. Pregnant vampires may have craved mortal foods but they still held absolutely no nourishment for them or their babies, blood was the single vital component in ensuring good health. Without blood a vampire would begin to wither and their pregnancy would cease to be viable — a pregnant vampire could easily drain a bag of blood multiple times a day and still find themselves craving it, rather than simply feeding every few days as they normally would.

It was an odd thing to witness and something many pregnant mortals envied, the fact that vampires didn’t really expand anywhere but their bellies in this condition. The extra blood certainly made them more powerful but it didn’t gorge them the way overeating would do to a mortal in the same condition. Their bodies were still frozen in time, changing to simply make room for and support the life blooming inside them — which, for someone like Anastasia who was naturally very small, meant that she’d likely wind up on bed rest and need a lot of help to do even the simplest of tasks later on.

Despite having witnessed many other vampires begin families, this was all still very new to Kamilah. This first pregnancy was a long sea journey to a country where neither she or Anastasia knew the language, where land was in sight for such a long time that after a while it was just the horizon — and then one day birds would wheel over that dark shape and the end would suddenly be much too close, and when that happened all they could do was hope like hell that they’d had the right shots.

“I know this sounds crazy,” Anastasia murmured as she lay back on the couch, smiling softly as Kamilah fussed around her to make absolutely certain she was comfortable. They had exactly seventy minutes before they had to leave to show face at a Clan Sayeed baby’s first birthday party and she was going to nap on the couch whilst Kamilah finished working. “But I... I think I have some sort of psychic connection with the babies.”

Her eyebrows shot up and she knelt down on the floor right by her head and stroked the wispy flame coloured hairs at her temple. “What do you mean?”

“It’s stupid—“

“Not to me. Not if it’s you.”

“Well it could just be hormones but I... I’m feeling emotions that don’t... feel like mine, I guess.” The Bloodkeeper shrugged. “I don’t know how to explain it because they’re obviously too immature to have any thoughts and feelings of their own yet but— I know some people say vampire babies develop mentally much faster than mortal babies, but we haven’t conclusively proven that and— I don’t know, I guess I just... feel weirdly connected.”

“I don’t think that sounds stupid at all. We know how strong your mind is— it’s so strong that you don’t even know the true extent of your abilities yet.” She pressed a kiss to her brow and slipped a hand beneath the blanket to rest on her stomach. “What is it that you’re feeling?”

“A desire to be with you all the time,” Anastasia whispered. “But it’s different from the way I usually want to be with you, if that makes any sense. It’s like... a magnet... just pulling me to you and then when I’m with you I feel so happy but in a... weirdly childlike way— can I just show you? I’m explaining this terribly because I don’t even know the words for it!”

She chuckled and pressed her brow to hers. “By all means.”

Without another word Anastasia’s left hand drifted to her temple and a very familiar warmth rose over her body. They fit beautifully together like this. When Anastasia allowed her to peer into her soul like this, it shattered her down to her deepest levels of complexity. This was something very, very deliberate. Something one had to be invited in to experience as no psychic was strong enough to breach the walls of The Bloodkeeper’s mind... and now that her training with Kano had reached its completion, Kamilah was the only one ever drawn in.

Peering into her wife’s mind like this was like a symphony. The moment the bow orchestra began to play an apocalyptically beautiful canon, one of those pieces in which, surely, the composer — her, in this case — simply transcribed what was given, and trembled in awe of the hand that was guiding her. 

She didn’t even realise that tears were pouring down her cheeks until Anastasia’s thumbs brushed them away. To be loved this much... to actually see herself for one single fleeting moment through Anastasia’s mind — through their babies minds? Did they even have minds yet? — and feel the innocent psychic pull that she spoke of... it was everything she hadn’t even realised that she’d wanted for most of her life.

She leaned in and buried her face in Anastasia’s neck and The Bloodkeeper wrapped her slender arms around her like armour, making a shelter for her to fall apart. She rested her cheek against the top of her sleek dark hair. That rich hair was so silky and thick and warm, and she was the only one allowed to touch it.

The love Kamilah felt then towards her wife and her babies was almost euphoric. Almost holy. This was how crusades were born, she thought to herself. With this kind of certainty about right and wrong, good and evil, and the need to protect until her dying breath.

“So when I say ‘we’,” Anastasia whispered, “I don’t think it’s the cute, silly thing I meant it to be at the start. I think it’s a literal thing.” She kissed her hair. “We love you very much, Kami... and we really are so lucky that you’re ours.”

She let out a watery laugh and gave her the gentlest kiss on the lips.

“I'd walk through fire for all three of you," she rasped, her voice hoarse. "I have walked through fire for you. I love you all more than life.”


	3. i’m dedicating every day to you.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by; Dear Theodosia by Regina Spektor and Ben Folds.

“Mommy killed a tree?,” Jax gasped, the mouthful of green bean casserole Elena Vo had prepared for this year’s thanksgiving feast at the Shadow Den dropping off of his fork.

"It tried to kill her first,” Lily said matter of factly. The resident wine aunt to every immortal child in Manhattan was already drunk. Brilliant, Kamilah thought, bloody brilliant. “Then it did kill her. Then it came back to life. Then your mama cut its head off. It was a whole ass thing.”

“Kami,” Anastasia yelped, grabbing her arm. “I’m not— I don’t want them to— Not yet—“

"Auntie Lily, you’re terrible at telling stories! You should tell us exactly what happened to you guys,” Zahra deadpanned.

Kamilah kicked Lily’s legs hard enough beneath the table that the fool toppled backwards out of her chair before she could reply. She was a tad more forceful than she initially intended to be... but perhaps giving her a concussion was a public service.

“What the fuck?,” Lily laughed twice as loudly as everybody else sat at the long table.

“Did you guys ever hear the story of the time your Mama taught me to drive and hit me with her car three times in one night?,” Adrian said, distracting both children as he immediately began a dramatic retelling of his story that was of cinematic proportions.

Kamilah glared over the table at her protégé and hissed. “You’re done drinking.”

“But—“

“No buts, Lily Spencer,” she growled. “You either stop drinking or I cut out your tongue. It’s entirely your choice.”

“Kamilah! No!,” squeaked Lily. “Oh shit. You can’t be serious—“

She raised an eyebrow. She did not grace people with her presence at this social gathering to argue with a woman wearing an anime t-shirt. “Trust me, ninety-nine times out of a hundred you can bet the bank that I’m serious.”

“What about the one time when you’re not?”

“I’m asleep.”

“Snap,” Lily snorted.

She sighed. “Snap, indeed.”

What was it about family celebrations, she wondered. Even when she’d been a girl there’d always been at least one Aunt who spent every holiday so utterly shit faced they’d have no memory of the occasion the next day. In their family that person never failed to be their children’s dear, beloved, fun Auntie Lily.

The children may have found her antics hilarious but the girl never failed to give her a series of small heart attacks.

The funny thing about Thanksgiving, or any big meal, Kamilah always found, was that one would spend hours shopping for it and hours cooking for it. Then it was gone in twenty minutes and everybody lay around sort of in a sugar coma — or in an alcohol induced stupor — and then it took four hours to clean it all up. This was one of the many reasons why there would never be a big celebration at the penthouse. She had neither the time nor the patience for it.

The annual Thanksgiving feast held at the Shadow Den was really the only time before The Dark Solstice that all the Clans would come together. It was quite different than it used to be. Now that their kind did not have to hide or fear mortals many people brought along their mortal lovers to celebrate, and there were far more children than there ever had been. 

The vast majority of immortal children in New York City were all very good friends thanks to the school that they attended here at the Shadow Den. Their classes were taught during the night where they generally learned the same things that mortal children learned in their schools — but with no homework issued in the name of mental health. The only real differences were that their history lessons focused on the history of the vampire world, and there were physical lessons where they would begin learning how to feed from the vein when their permanent fangs grew in and learn how to fight and hone any psychic abilities they may have had. 

However, just because their children had friends, that did not mean Kamilah enjoyed being obligated to socialise with their parents. She rather loathed it, actually, and tended to leave the vast majority of the obligatory socialisation to Anastasia. She still preferred to stand apart from the others at social functions, a dark, brooding, mysterious figure concealed in shadows. The small talk that passed between members of the community that didn’t normally socialise or only socialised only for their children’s sake was like drawing teeth to her... and she thought it highly inappropriate to grow too familiar with underlings of her Clan, lest they get ideas above themselves. She was not their friend, she was their leader, and she commanded their fear and their respect.

So she did everything she could to avoid the senseless small talk. She actually doubted that she had ever uttered the words ‘have a good day’ or ‘this weather we’re having...’ in her entire life. Even if she got the right words out, the natural chill in her dark eyes when she gazed upon anybody but her family would completely nullify the warmth of the sentiments. In her opinion, a person’s failure to have a good day or form their own opinion about the weather was their problem, not hers.

Kamilah Sayeed was a woman who was at home in shadows, anyway. From here she could watch her wife and her children, ensuring that they were safe — after all, a vampire with a past had nothing to lose but a woman with a future could not be too careful or too vigilant.

Most people who’d known her for a long time noticed that she was more social than she used to be, though, despite the fact she was never really in the thick of things. Since meeting Anastasia she had begun gracing people with her presence at far more things than she once had, but they understood that she still prowled the fringes of the world. She was part bodyguard, part troubleshooter and, to most people’s way of thinking, part enforcer of Anastasia’s regime — the closest thing to a benevolent Queen Consort the vampire world had ever had.

That was exactly how she liked it though. She did not wish to be loved the way her wife was. She simply wished to remain a slightly terrifying mystery that nobody would ever dream of crossing, commanding the utmost respect and loyalty. Most people only knew enough about her to realise that no one would ever understand her or get to know anything about her at all unless she wished it, and that was highly unlikely. She was a woman who marched to the beat of her own drum, working by her own rules even when she was doing a job for the greater good of their society. Most people out with her very close social circle thought of her in the same way they thought of hurricanes, charging lions and marauding sharks. The only sensible thing to do when any of them was in the vicinity was to get out of the way.

Anyway, she was old enough to know who she liked and who she did not like and she had more than enough friends. Her wife, her children, Adrian, Serafine, and Lily were the only people she liked and allowed to see past her mask — and Mathew and his husband were... growing on her... meaning she no longer loathed them both entirely or required a drink to recover from gracing them with her presence. Which, coming from her, was as close to an outright declaration of friendship as anyone would ever get.

“Tyler asked me about how them becoming fathers would work earlier,” Anastasia smiled they sat down on one of the loveseats in one of the many communal living spaces to recover from their dinner. She gestured towards where Mathew and Tyler were crawling along the floor pretending to be unicorns with a twin each sitting on their backs. 

“The thought of a miniature Mathew running around frightens me,” she snorted, kissing her brow. The dangerous energy that had swirled around her shifting with disconcerting abruptness into a warmth and adoration that nobody else would ever get to experience.

Anastasia giggled softly. “I know you like him, dork.”

“I find his presence, at times, tolerable,” Kamilah countered.

Anastasia nuzzled her face into the crook of Kamilah’s neck, finding the spot that always made her squirm and laugh. "I love you, you massive old dork.”

“Old?” She feigned as much offence as she could muster. “I’ll have you know I’m a very spritely 2107, thank you very much.”

“Mhm.”

“Wives are supposed to give their wives lots of moral support. You’re supposed to fluff up the domme ego and tell me how brilliant and bold I am!” She playfully nudged her arms. “Not call me old!”

Anastasia wrinkled her nose at her. “Where did you get that notion?”

“All dommes know how wives are supposed to behave.” She sighed dramatically and nipped at her bottom lip. “We’re born knowing.”

“Is that right? It must come as kind of a shock for each new generation of dommes when they discover their bratty women don’t always behave the way they’re supposed to, hmm?” The comment was tart, but her eyes were brimming with delight.

Kamilah shook her head mournfully. “It’s a shock, I admit. But we persevere.”

Anastasia started giggling, “Alright, alright. You’re a very spritely 2107, you don’t seem a day over 2106– and here I’m still freaking out about nearing my first century.”

She snorted. “I assure you, you haven’t aged a day since twenty-two, my darling... and I somehow love you even more ardently now than I ever could’ve imagined back then.”

Anastasia rested her head against her shoulder and she pressed a kiss to her crown before resting her cheek against her hair, both of their eyes locked on the happy scene unfolding before their eyes. Their children were happy and playing with their dear friends Mathew and Tyler, with Vladimir and Lula having joined in the games. Adrian and Serafine were involved in some deep conversation or other that was being whispered over by the bookcases stacked with books that were difficult to read. And Lily... Lily was currently doing pumpkin spice jell-o shots with Nikhil and Arnold, having ignored Kamilah’s threats of losing her tongue.

The society of vampires that world now knew was unlike anything Kamilah had ever imagined. Part of her wondered if this was what Gaius had truly thought that he was fighting for all those years that they’d spent as nomads slaughtering their way across the globe. Had he really believed that such peace and prosperity could be achieved after so many acts of unspeakable violence? 

Lost in her thoughts, she nuzzled her cheek against her wife’s hair like a sleepy cat. She’d been the integral puzzle piece in achieving all that they had now; their society, their ability to live in the open without fear or shame, their ability to have all the same opportunities as mortals. It was all thanks to her — her celebrated female power. With courage, intelligence and gentleness she had brought the once most dangerous creature on the earth, Kamilah Sayeed, to her knees and upended everything she’d ever known.

~~~~ five years earlier ~~~~

“Sister, you’re scaring me,” Adrian said uneasily.

Kamilah sighed and fiddled nervously with the wedding set on her left hand. This was exciting news that she was about to share but she understood why, for Adrian, the news might be a little bittersweet. She knew how he missed his son. It was exactly why she’d opted to inform him of the news before telling Lily and Serafine at the scheduled family dinner later in the week.

He would be happy for her, no doubt. Just as he had been happy for her when Anastasia had chosen her. 

She just didn’t want to make him grieve his beloved Charles any more than he already did.

“Kamilah?” He rested a hand on her shoulder. “What’s the matter? Are you and Anastasia having problems?”

She covered his hand with hers and shook her head. “Far from it, actually.”

“Then what had gotten you so nervous?” He let out a raspy breath. “You haven’t been this on edge since Gaius resurrected after Anastasia’s Turning— when you literally would not leave her side for a single second and wouldn’t tolerate him so much as looking in her direction.”

She laughed lightly at the memory. God, it seemed like a lifetime ago.

She pinched the bridge of her nose and actually looked out of the window of his living room window, studying the world of oblivious mortals below. He still lived in his built in Raines Corp penthouse, despite the fact the company was now Anastasia’s responsibility and he whats very successful political career. She realised that the wind had shifted to the North. A wintery storm wasn’t far off. Even from behind the glass could smell the freezing moisture in the air, a fetid, living thing. Isolated drops of snow had started to fall, licking at windows, the sidewalks, the people below.

“Annie is twelve weeks pregnant, Adrian.” She sounded so damn casual as she spoke. As if the decision she and Anastasia had made wasn’t staggering in its implications. As if it was not going to alter destinies and potentially change the fate of nations — any child or theirs would be destined to do great things that nobody could yet imagine. “With twins,” she added after a moment. “We’re having twins.”

The statement was met with a stunned silence and Kamilah’s entire body stiffened.

Adrian was so stunned by the news that even his breathing had stopped.

Hesitantly, she turned to face him to be met with teary eyes and the same joyous smile that had been on his face when she’d informed him she was going to be getting married.

Before she could say a word, he’d drawn her into a bone crushing bear hug. Under normal circumstances this would’ve been far too much physical affection for her to even dream about tolerating, but today she wrapped her arms around him with the same unwavering strength and buried her face in his shoulder.

“I’m so proud of you,” he said, tightening his hold.

“Adrian...”

“It has to be said.” He led her to the couch and they sat down side by side. “After all you’ve suffered, Kamilah, it does my heart an unspeakable good to see you so happy. You have certainly earned it.”

She would never admit it, but hearing Adrian say things like that meant a great deal to her. He had known her at her worst and at her weakest. Now he knew her at her best.

“You’re the first person to find out,” she said, giving his hand an affectionate squeeze. “So don’t mention it to anyone else.”

“When are you telling the others?”

“Later this week... then we will be publicly announcing on Monday.” She sighed happily and pulled up a few sonogram images to show him on her phone. “We find out the genders in two weeks— which obviously is incredibly unimportant as we plan to shun imposing traditional gender roles upon our children, but we just wish to be as informed as possible about every little thing.”

His eyes widened in awe as he tried to make out the black and white images. “And they’re both healthy?”

“As far as we know. One of them is a little smaller than the other, which is to be expected as Annie is very petite,” she nodded. “The cardiology tests are in a few weeks. Annie is incredibly worried about them, even though she knows even if her defects are present there will be no chance of a sudden cardiac death as there was in her case... she just does not want them to suffer the discomfort of any arrhythmias.”

Adrian nodded and handed back her phone with a smug smile on his face. 

“What?,” she laughed.

“I knew something was up when we were walking to the Shadow Den after having dinner last weekend you were acting as Anastasia’s bodyguard the whole time. I just didn’t naturally assume I’d be becoming an uncle—“

“I was not—“

“Kamilah, you walked with one arm around her shoulders and a hand on the hilt of your blade and would make her walk to your right hand side so she was between the buildings and your body. If somebody looked like they were getting too close you’d stop and draw her into a hug until they passed, and you literally insisted on carrying her when we had to take the short cut through Times Square with Serafine and I walking on either side of you whilst Lily flanked us.” He laughed and patted her knee to placate her irritated grumbling. “We all thought it was some sort of new kink we were uneducated in...”

She huffed. “I don’t know whether to be amused or offended you all decided it was some sort of kink. What the hell was I supposed to be getting off on, might I ask?”

“You know it’s funny you ask, as we couldn’t quite decide. Lily thought you were introducing a new form of submission and Serafine thought it was some kind of role play— we did notice neither of you drinking but assumed it was for reasons concerning the validity of consent.”

“You people are ridiculous.”

He snorted. “Please. You two are, as Lily likes to say, freaks. We never know what’s part of the games you play with each other and what’s not.”

She opened her mouth to retort but anything she could’ve fired back with died on her tongue when she realised he did indeed have a valid point. The imbeciles weren’t exactly vanilla by any means but they’d somehow been shocked to find out about the existence of day collars and all the non-sexual facets of BDSM that they engaged in.

“Perhaps I have been rather... jumpy... in regards to her safety,” she sighed. 

Jumpy was putting it lightly. She was constantly thinking of new ways to ensure that her family was safe and being in public with Anastasia had begun making her very nervous. She was always armed to the teeth but nowadays she was essentially a one woman barricade protecting her wife and her babies from the rest of the world — Anastasia had begun to tease her by singing songs from Les Miserables and yelling ‘Viva La France’ before hanging up the phone, which she was far too amused by for her own good.

However, when she’d gone as far as to install a new state of the art military grade security and home defence system in the penthouse just to be absolutely certain they were as safe as could be, Anastasia had then pulled her aside to have a talk with her — as she knew that her talk of having panic rooms that could withstand a nuclear blast installed in the future nursery and their bedroom wasn’t just talk at all. She’d really have turned their home into a military fortress with its own nukes if she’d been allowed to run wild.

The problem was Kamilah had never had what one would consider a healthy relationship before, so she didn’t always realise when her behaviours were bordering on possessive and controlling rather than being signs of mere protectiveness. Whenever Anastasia felt stifled she didn’t ever lose her patience with her, as she knew why she was the way she was, and understood that she wasn’t purposely trying to be overly controlling. She literally didn’t notice certain behaviours until they were pointed out — and when they were brought to her attention, it was always in a gentle conversation of whispered words and lots of reassuring kisses. Anastasia would even help her make an adjustment by either telling her what the healthy version of her behaviour was or helping her wrangle the anxious thoughts that had spurred the overly controlling behaviour.

Her wife’s patience and unwavering kindness was something Kamilah appreciated immensely. There weren’t many people who’d be able to love her through her less than stellar moments, when the fact that she was still healing and learning the differences between a healthy relationship and an unhealthy one became very apparent. But her sweet Annie did... and she never once made her feel broken or guilty about anything.

If there was one thing she hoped for, it was that their children would inherit her kindness. The world needed more people like that, she thought.

“When Eleanor was pregnant were you...”

“I was terrified,” he nodded as she trailed off. “I barely left her side for those nine months and as talk of war was brewing at the time I— I was seriously looking for ways to move to either England or France in the hopes we might find safety. I’d have had to sell everything we owned just to afford the trip, which just wasn’t a smart move. In the end I wound up fighting in the revolution for them— there was nothing I wouldn’t have done to see them safe.”

“I feel like I’m driving myself insane worrying about her,” she confessed. “She’s the strongest vampire in the world and is certainly still more than capable of defending herself. I just— I don’t know. It’s like this primal instinct I have that makes me want to protect them.”

“That’s called being a parent,” he sighed. 

“Does it get easier to bear?” She twirled her wedding set around her finger. “I’m honestly driving myself around the bend, Adrian.”

“It is a feeling that will never leave you.” He stayed silent for a long moment, simply studying her. “The very fact that you can even wonder if you’re going crazy means you very likely aren’t crazy. Real nuts don’t question their own nuttiness. They think they’re the only normal ones. That’s why they’re nuts.”

She nodded and stayed silent for a long moment, pondering the thought. “Were you also nervous at the thought of the delivery?”

“I certainly lost sleep over the thought.” He chuckled at the memory. “It wasn’t really seen as socially acceptable for fathers to be in the room yet when Charles was born but Ellie wanted me there, so of course I stayed at her side. The midwives weren’t pleased but I like to think I was able to bring my Ellie some comfort.”

“How was it?,” she asked with bated breath. “Be completely honest with me, please. The way these modern pregnancy books sugar coat things is unbearable and makes it seem like each publication was written by a toddler.”

“Those 26 hours were the most difficult of my life,” he said after a moment, his eyes distant. “I spent them getting cold cloths for her forehead and reading to her between contractions. She didn’t sleep at all and between the contractions her spirits were high until she started to tire.” He sighed. “The screaming was... horrible... I couldn’t bear to hear her screaming like that. Standing there and being unable to do anything but hold her hand and promise that the pain would soon end was the most helpless I’ve ever felt. By the end of it she was so exhausted I feared I might lose her, but the moment you hear that first cry... the moment you hold your child in your arms for the first time... all of that becomes irrelevant.”

“It does?,” she whispered. The thought of seeing Anastasia in any sort of pain at all terrified her to her very core but she knew that was part of the whole journey to becoming parents. She remembered Cleopatra’s tortured screams as she was giving birth, which had terrified her so much as a mortal that she’d resorted to kicking men in the groin when they so much as looked in her direction.

He nodded, dabbing at his eyes. “I’ll never forget the moment I saw her cradling Charles in her arms for the first time. It was like seeing her for the first time all over again... in that moment I fell in love with her in a way that I hadn’t realised was possible.” He cleared his throat and gave her a sad smile. “You’ll understand what I’m talking about once your children arrive. It’s normal to be nervous but I’ve seen you summon the strength to be a pillar of strength for Anastasia through unimaginable moments of pain before, as her mortal life faded you were her anchor... child birth will require you to reach from that same place once again and summon that same strength— but we both know you will get her through it.”

“Indeed I will,” she breathed.

Oddly enough, she felt a great deal calmer after talking to Adrian.

Perhaps it was because he’d been in her position once. Or perhaps it was because she trusted him so much.

She just wanted to make sure she was doing things right by her wife, and she didn’t intend to settle for anything less. Kamilah knew she wasn’t necessarily doing it for the babies at this moment in time, who wouldn’t know the difference between a shiny new crib and a cardboard box or whether she was calm or not. She was doing it for her Annie. 

She wanted them both to take pleasure in everything that had to do with the babies. She was a woman who appreciated nice things and peaceful surroundings but never demanded them, and Kamilah was determined that she would be surrounded by them while she carried their children.

And she swore, she would be around for them. 

She would do whatever it took. 

She’d make a million mistakes.

She’d make the world safe and sound for them.


	4. you’ll never love yourself half as much as i love you.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by; Little Things vs. Night Changes by Matt Johnson.

“I don’t understand,” Kamilah grumbled, her eyes widening at this ridiculous mortal cartoon that she’d somehow been roped into watching. “He is a... sponge... but lives in a pineapple... which is under the sea... and he... he cooks burgers for an angry capitalist for a living?”

“Exactly, Mama!,” Jax beamed through a mouthful of croissants from the end of their bed. “And his best friend is a starfish.”

“What are the burgers made out of?” Her brow furrowed. “Are there cows living under the sea now? Or are these fish experimenting with cannibalism?”

“The krabby patty recipe is top secret.” Zahra glanced over her shoulder at her through crimson eyes, her blood filled sippy cup in her hands and a small trickle of AB negative running down her chin. “And Spongebob is friends with a squirrel who lives in... um... in an opposite fish tank—“

“An opposite fish tank?,” she echoed, glancing at a drowsy Anastasia for clarification.

The Bloodkeeper rubbed at her eyes and cracked them open a tad. “The fish are on the outside and she’s on the inside, the sea creatures wear helmets filled with water when the visit her. Its... it’s basically like a little biodome with breathable air and a tree in it so she doesn’t have to wear her spacesuit all the time—“

“Why the hell would a squirrel be wearing a spacesuit?”

“So she can have fun her friends in Bikini Bottom,” Jax said as if that much was obvious.

She sighed.

Kamilah adored this weekend evening routine when their children would come into their bed to watch their cartoons and eat whatever they’d decided to order for breakfast, and she and Anastasia wouldn’t be expected to rise from bed before 8:30pm... 9pm on a good day. However, the shows that they liked were utterly ridiculous. What sort of mewling mortal thought up these concepts, she often found herself wondering, and were they detained for a swift mental health evaluation after pitching them to a board room? 

In the dim light of the last few moments of the sunset shining through the bedroom windows, her eyes watched the TV screen relentlessly, the way a falcon watched a fleeing morsel.

This could not be right.

Bloody hell. This just could not be right at all.

The sponge and the starfish were chasing jellyfish with nets for some odd reason and... they were singing.

This show was not educational in the slightest.

“Does this actually make sense to anyone?,” she whispered to Anastasia. “This seems like one of Lily’s acid trips brought to life before my eyes.”

The Bloodkeeper mumbled something unintelligible and snuggled closer to her. She wasn’t happy in the slightest to have been woken up at 5:45pm on a Saturday and was struggling so much that she’d only managed to consume two sips of her iced chai tea before falling asleep again.

“I think I understand why my mother used to drug me with cold medicine to make me sleep—“ She cut herself off with a yawn. 

“She used to what?,” she cringed. That one sentence had certainly gotten her attention. This was new information. She looked at her beloved, her eyes as wide and startled as those of a doe who had never seen a person before. She hoped that she’d misheard her... but she knew that she hadn’t.

Anastasia’s face gave away the fact that she was tired enough that she’d spoken that out loud without actually meaning to and for a single moment she looked like the timid, haunted little thing that stared through time at her in all of her childhood pictures. 

“She’d give me something to make me drowsy every night and when I was being too much of a pain and bothering her on her Bad Days.” She rubbed at her eyes. “I suppose it could’ve been worse...”

“I loathe that woman,” she grumbled.

“I always thought the medicine tasted nice.” Anastasia simply shrugged as if she’d just stated weather. “Sucked when I got a cold and it didn’t work unless she like tripled the dose though... I’m honestly surprised the bitch didn’t accidentally kill me.”

“Annie..”

She stroked her fingers through her hair and heaved a tired sigh, placing a kiss to her brow. It hurt her heart a great deal when Anastasia would casually mention things that her mother had done to her whilst struggling with her own Bloodkeeper visions. It may never have been her mother’s intention to cause her pain, as she had also been suffering a great pain. Whether Anastasia felt a lot of it or very little, that did not excuse the thoughtless behaviour the woman had displayed whilst thinking only of her own torment.

How anyone could mistreat her the way she had... Kamilah just didn’t know.

This woman was her heart as it beat within her chest, her soul as it moved through her mind. The breath in her ancient body that so fascinated her was Anastasia’s very essence pouring in and out of her in a wave that drowned her over and over again until she could not breathe for wanting her. Needing her. Loving her.

“Mama, look,” Zahra said, drawing her attention to the TV. A horrifying octopus looking creature with a terrible attitude problem for someone without pants on was now on the screen. “That’s Squidward Tentacles.”

“He lives next door to Spongebob and Patrick,” Jax clarified. “Oh and he works at the Krusty Krab.”

“Ah... with the capitalist crab who somehow has a whale as a daughter,” she nodded, making both kids laugh at her bewilderment. She did her utmost to speak firmly and with confidence that she’d been able to follow this drivel, yet she ended on a questioning note. Part of her was wondering if the whale was actually the crabs daughter or if it was some odd sugar baby arrangement that went over children’s heads. “Of course he does. It’s perfectly sensible. Dare I ask what kind of fruit he lives in?”

“He lives in a head,” Zahra beamed.

“Excuse me?,” she snorted.

“It’s not a head it’s a statue,” laughed Jax.

“It’s a statue of a head!,” pouted Zahra.

“It’s called a moai,” Anastasia interjected before an argument about said head could break out. “The Rapa Nui people carved them a long time ago on Easter Island.”

“Were they vampires, mommy?,” asked Jax.

“No,” Anastasia yawned as she languidly sat up and reached for her iced chai tea. “They were mortal, honey.”

She couldn’t help but smile as that opened up a whole new discussion, and found herself unspeakably thankful that her wife somehow had all of this information at hand. Anastasia’s wide array of general knowledge and trivia certainly came in handy parenting two five year olds who easily asked three hundred questions every single day.

She was incredibly and unbearably beautiful when she was talking to their children like this.

There was no other way for her to adequately describe it to herself. It was beyond being just pretty. Pretty was a common adjective, limited in its scope. This woman was honestly beautiful. Her facial features were so very elegant, taking the term noble to the extreme. Dark auburn brows winged up over her kind azure eyes, both of breathtaking colour even in the shadows of the night. So dramatic, but then so belied by the ridiculous childlike length of lush lashes. Her magnificent eyes were lit with a soft, smoldering light of amusement when the kids asked funny questions, and Kamilah’s breath hitched as her sensual mouth was lifting up at the corner in a smile she could only call sinful.

This was what Adrian had meant when he had told her that he had fallen deeper in love with Eleanor when he saw her with Charles. This was exactly what he’d been talking about.

“Why is the tiny green villain married to a computer?,” Kamilah stammered. “What the hell is this show?!”

Both kids shrieked with laughter and started jumping up and down on the mattress. Through all the hilarity she could only make out a few words and managed to figure out he lived in... a bucket. 

Mortals. Bloody mortals... thinking this shit up. No wonder they were such feebleminded beings.

“This is nonsensical,” she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“If you like, we can leave you for a few hours and let you figure this—”

She playfully grabbed Anastasia’s arm just above the elbow when she made a strong but playful movement to get up off the bed, jerking her back down definitively. She and the children all worked together to pin her down, ignoring her giggles and wriggles.

“Absolutely not! You did this to me; therefore, you get to enjoy the fallout!” She smirked at her. “You will lay here in my arms and answer each one of my questions in detail.”

“You make it sound like a punishment,” Anastasia remarked, her eyes dancing with humour. “There is nowhere I would rather be.”

She leaned forward to engage her mouth in a tender kiss, their lips clinging together as if reluctant to release. Finally, she sat back and pressed kisses to both of their children’s foreheads, leaving them all warm and happy.

“Charmer,” Anastasia accused her without malice.

“Siren,” she countered, laughing as she lay down with her head on her chest and settled in with their children cuddled against them to watch one more episode of this ridiculous cartoon before beginning their night. 

~~~~ five years earlier ~~~~

Kamilah was massaging her wife’s lower back with an automatic motion and paying no mind to the fact Serafine and Lily had been freaking out in an unprecedented manner since the news had left their lips. She always knew when her Annie was hurting, despite not being too far along carrying two babies was much harder on the body and she was already experiencing significant discomfort in her spine — and it certainly wasn’t being helped by the all too excited future aunties ridiculous name suggestions. 

No child of theirs would ever bear the name Serafina. Apparently — according to Serafine at least — changing just one letter made the name entirely different to her own. And they would certainly not be going for Liliana for a girl or Liliano for a boy, which Kamilah wasn’t sure was even a real name. Apparently the o at the end gave it an Italian sounding flare and — in some bizarre way no sane individual could understand — payed homage to her favourite Milano cookies by ending in the same three letters. It made perfect sense in Lily’s mind despite the fact she and Anastasia were about as far from being Italian as it was possible to be.

She was just thankful Adrian hadn’t bitten when Lily had offered him the bait of a potential future niece being named Adrienne or a nephew by the name of Adrian Jr.

Anastasia leaned into her warm palm as the silly discussion about baby names wore on, savouring the small comfort.

“Are you alright, my love?,” she asked with concern.

“I’m fine. Just the usual aches and pains. I’ll be so glad when the babies get here.“

Kamilah smiled softly and kissed her temple. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Just promise me that when it comes time to pick names, Liliano will never be an option.”

She snorted and looped her pinky around hers as a means of displaying her promise. “How does she even come up with this nonsense?”

Anastasia giggled, shrugging her shoulders. “Who knows... but you’ve got to love her.”

“Indeed... what a refreshing breath of fresh air it is to have a protégé refrain from becoming a serial killer or a broody poet.”

Kamilah was soon eating her words, as Lily decided that their children must be destined to either have some odd element bending abilities like in the Avatar cartoon she liked to watch or be like a character called Eleven from a show called Stranger Things — a joke which Anastasia and Adrian both immediately appreciated. 

Being present at the creation of a full-blown conspiracy theory. It was like watching a galaxy being born. Lots of random, unconnected bits and pieces of matter whizzed past each other, exerted a little gravitational pull and bingo, they started forming an organised system. The next thing you knew you had a complete, wheels-within-wheels fantasy involving the CIA, Area 51, cosmic energy, a dead guy, and predictive programming.

She might’ve been listening to this conversation with a distinctly unimpressed look on her face, but when it came to dysfunctional families, she’d put hers up against anyone's, anytime. These were the people she had learned to trust wholly. For her whole life everybody had thought Kamilah so strong and self-confident, but inside she’d really been a frightened child, waiting to suffer betrayal again from those who should love her most... but things were so different now. Their children may have only had two parents, but raising them would be a team effort. 

This was their village. 

Their whacky, bizarre, deranged, and unconditionally loving village.

Once everybody had left the penthouse, not long before sunrise, Kamilah and Anastasia snuggled up on the couch in their pyjamas beneath their favourite blanket, determined to find some decent nursery inspiration on Pinterest. They had an empty room, infinite possibilities, and an unending budget with which to create whatever they wanted.

“What were cribs like when you were a baby?,” Anastasia asked as they studied a see through very modern baby bed made of what looked like either plexi glass or some other sort of clear plastic. “Mine was this horrible wooden thing.”

“Lysi and I slept in bassinets of solid gold,” Kamilah stated nonchalantly. “Rather gaudy things by my standards, and my parents commanded servants to rock us back and forth all night to ensure us good sleeping... which didn’t work. Apparently I was a fussy little thing who required an unending stream of physical affection in order to settle.”

Anastasia snorted. “So nothing’s changed then.”

“The only thing that has changed is now I only crave one person’s affection in order to sleep well.” She bopped the tip of her nose with her finger, her mind drifting back to her childhood. “As a child I often played a game where I declared myself both king and queen of all Egypt and forced the servants to play with me as I waltzed around my parents summer villa wielding my father’s swords. Lysimachus was my royal steed and he’d often carry me on his shoulders. I’d become incredibly distressed and try to pass death sentences if anybody refused to indulge in the game.”

“You tried to pass death sentences?,” giggled Anastasia.

“Indeed.” She sighed wistfully. “I was obviously unsuccessful, however, a fair few of my dolls found themselves subject to a public beheading or drowning in The Nile after I declared them treasonous. I’d gather the entire household and command them to watch. I— now that I think about it, I was a highly disturbed child.”

“I just used to fake being dead when I wanted fawned over,” Anastasia laughed. “Which, I mean, now I get was kind of dumb for a kid with a bad heart to do... but I had a lot of fun back in the day. I used to do it so much I was banned from the swimming pool at my school because I’d float face down and pretend to be dead to avoid having to swim lengths in gym class.”

She laughed softly and carded her fingers slowly through the length of her hair. “I have a feeling our children will be handfuls and— Annie?” 

Every muscle in her body tensed as Anastasia’s eyes widened and her hands flew down to her stomach.

“What’s wrong?” She practically threw the laptop across the room and her hands flew down to cover hers on her stomach. “Baby—“

“I— I think I can feel them moving,” Anastasia stammered. Without another word she took Kamilah’s hand and pressed it flat against the skin of her lower abdomen. “Kami... they’re moving...”

Kamilah’s jaw dropped as the faintest little fluttering movement tickled her palm. Her eyes locked on Anastasia’s and all they could do was stare at each other in awe, their brows rested together and their hearts beating in perfect sync. Once. Twice. Three times. The movements were so little and so faint if she moved her hand an inch she’d miss them. She gently stroked her thumb back and forth across Anastasia’s belly and experienced a sensation that prickled along her spine like a warm touch caressing her skin. Four times. Five times the movements repeated themselves before stopping.

Without a word she bent down to pepper a few kisses on the spot where their interlocked fingers had rested, smiling softly as Anastasia caressed the back of her head.

“We promise not to name either of you Liliano,” she murmured, her lips brushing against her skin between her every word. Anastasia’s watery laugh was one of pure joy and Kamilah quickly added, “and if you ever decide to make a game out of playing dead as your mother did, I will not be amused.”

Anastasia gently drew her up and into a long kiss, her hands framing her face as she whispered her devotions against Kamilah’s lips. She still thought it absolutely maddening that one woman could be the source of so many wonderfully peculiar sensations. She'd never felt such sensations before — and somehow those streaking through her now were far stronger than those she'd felt earlier in their relationship, like she was connected to her in a way she hadn’t imagined possible before. It was her touch that did it — the touch of her azure eyes, the touch of her always-too-cold hands. She didn't even need to contact bare skin to make every square inch she possessed react.

“That was wonderful,” she whispered.

Anastasia nodded in agreement and bit down on her bottom lip, her eyes glazing over a little as she studied her. It was a look that Kamilah knew very well.

She raised an eyebrow and smirked at her. “What?”

Anastasia covered her face with her hands. “It’s the hormones—“

“It’s not the hormones. I just happen to be a very attractive woman and you are very, very gay.”

“Yes to both of those things,” Anastasia giggled hysterically, “but it’s also the hormones.”

“I’m much too attractive for my own good.” She sighed and playfully nipped at her ear. “My sex appeal is practically a pregnancy craving all on its own.”

“You are nothing but an ancient pervert,” she teased her.

“And this is an issue because...”

“Kami!,” Anastasia laughed.

“Alright. Alright. I’ll play nice.” Kamilah gently moved her hands away from her face and peppered kisses across her sweetly flushed cheeks, then back to her lips. Her lips were silky soft, skilled in the art of love, giving pleasure with the lightest touch. She barely brushed her lips, yet she found herself lifting her face, seeking her touch like a sunflower followed the sun. “How do you want it, Annie?”

“Just... make love to me.”

Her breath hitched in her throat and she effortlessly scooped her up and began carrying her towards the bedroom. Even now it amazed her how easy she was to carry.

Under normal circumstances she wouldn’t have thought twice about having her right there on the couch, but she knew that making her comfortable on the bed would bode much better on her achy back. 

“You're like a drug,” she murmured as she lay her down on the mattress. “And I'm addicted.”

Anastasia’s cheeks flushed a rosier shade of pink and she giggled softly. “Even now that my belly is showing a little bit?”

She trailed open mouthed kisses across her chest as she went about stripping her out of her pyjamas and looked up at her through hooded eyes. Her dark orbs narrowed and she reached to enclose her hand in her own, pulling her wrist up to the slow, purposeful brush of her lips even as she maintained a sensual eye contact that was far too full of promises. Anastasia caught her breath as an insidious sensation of heated pins and needles stitched its way up her arm.

“You’re the most beautiful thing in this world to me,” she murmured against her shoulder. “Now and always.”

Their sex life had certainly changed a great deal since finding out that Anastasia was pregnant. There was absolutely no way Kamilah would even think about chaining her up or punishing her or doing any sort of pain play whilst she was in this condition, regardless of how consensual everything always was. There ought to be laws against such things, she thought. Even the sadist in her was horrified by the mere thought of doing anything even remotely sadistic to a pregnant woman.

“Tell me if I’m being too rough—“

“I’m pregnant not made of glass, Kami,” Anastasia giggled, nuzzling her neck as she pulled her slip nightgown off of her body.

Kamilah nipped at her ear as she separated her thighs, being careful that none of her weight was rested on her stomach. The scent of her arousal hardened every muscle in her body and she moved her hand down her hip and then to her hot, warm core.

“I know you’re not made of glass,” she whispered. “But I must tell you that..." she paused and her voice filled with infinite gentleness and tenderness. "You are so very precious to me, so I just want to make sure I’m keeping you safe as I’m devouring you.”

“You always do. I trust you.”

The warm stillness within the bedroom was broken only by the rustling of the blankets, and soft, urgent murmurs. Then the silence gave way to soft moans, whimpers, breathless pants, desperate gasps. Culminating in a soft, piercingly sweet scream, writhing, sobbing, into a deep guttural moan.

Everything was slow and much sweeter than they were used to, even as Anastasia touched her Kamilah requested that she do it slowly. It definitely wasn’t often that they indulged in lovemaking like this... but it was a beautiful, beautiful thing. So intimate that it would’ve frightened her, once.

The reined power behind each deliberate thrust and stroke sent a thrill arcing through Kamilah’s body. A primitive sense of safety along with the recognition of vulnerability; even now Anastasia was so much stronger than she, her body may have been smaller but her mind was so much more powerful than hers.

Yet Anastasia was as careful with her as she was being in turn. The realisation slid through her, but she couldn't focus enough to think, then the heat of their passion rose another degree and claimed her.

Sent fire and a hungry, ravenous need sliding through her veins, making her writhe, making her gasp. It inexorably branded desire deep into her flesh, marking and searing, until she burned.

Until her body was aflame, until the flames coalesced and concentrated, burning deeper and hotter until she sobbed and clung and desperately urged her on, and she rode her fingers faster, harder, deeper.

Until with a rush, all heat and yearning, she found herself clinging to that final, dizzying peak. Felt Anastasia thrust one last time and shatter her, felt the furnace within her that she'd stoked and fed rupture, felt glory pour forth and sear her veins.

And rush through her.

And then she watched with her eyes, tasted with her tongue, heard with her ears and felt with her fingers as her beautiful girl reached one last breathtaking climax. The only sense she didn’t use as she came apart was that of speech. There were no words to describe her, nor were there ones she could coherently form in the moment; she was a work of art, and she found herself speechless.

She didn’t hesitate for a moment before pulling the covers up around them and drawing her into her embrace. She couldn’t help but revel in the contented little sigh that Anastasia let out as one of her hands drifted to her cheek to brush it with the pad of her thumb in that special way she always did, that made her feel far more cherished than she even knew how to articulate.

“Thank you for that,” Anastasia whispered.

Kamilah trailed her hand up and down the length of her spine and smiled softly. “Thank you.”

Anastasia smiled and Kamilah gently brushed her lips, her mind anticipating the blossom of her mouth beneath her own. She loved the little catch of breath she gave as she slid her tongue inside, loved the flavour of spiced apple tea she could still vaguely taste on her tongue, loved that she couldn't resist twining her fingers in her hair as she pushed it out of her face. 

With gentle smiles and quiet laughs they broke apart, keeping their brows rested together and their heads rested on the same pillow. They’d practically melted into the bed, almost afloat with satiation.

“I love you so much, Kami.”

“As I love you, my little firefly.” They both smiled at the old term of endearment. “So, so much.”

It didn’t take long for Anastasia to drift off to sleep right there in her arms. Kamilah stayed awake for a while longer, simply watching over her. She trailed her hands through the length of her hair and traced her spine, smiling contentedly as her thumb lazily stroked her cheekbone even as she was sleeping.

Outside the window a blizzard was blanketing Manhattan, the icy wind whizzing between the skyscrapers. She liked to hear a storm at night. It was so cosy to snuggle down among the blankets and feel that it couldn’t get at them. They were safe and they were together.

She was happy.

Life was good.


	5. and the world thought i had it all but i was waiting for you.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by; A New Day Has Come by Celine Dion (Slow Version)

Reading had been Kamilah’s escape and her greatest comfort, her consolation, and her stimulant of choice since her mortal life: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounded her when she heard an author's words reverberating in her head and the whole world slipped away. There was scarcely a book in print that she had not devoured from cover to cover in multiple languages or couldn’t find something to appreciate within the bounds of its pages. 

However, she was not a fan of Dr. Seuss. This green eggs and cats wearing hats nonsense was not her cup of tea in the slightest... and nor was the reclusive, hairy green Christmas goblin who lived in a mountain — and she certainly did not appreciate her wife’s jokes that she’d expected her to act like said goblin before their first Dark Solstice as a couple.

She wasn’t even sure this ridiculous mortal author was a real doctor of anything.

Oh, the things she endured for her children’s enjoyment.

“We should get a pet cat,” Jax yawned as she pulled the weighted blanket on his bed around his little body. “That way he can wear a hat like the cat in the story.”

“We could get two cats and call them Thing One and Thing Two,” Zahra said from her bed as Anastasia tucked her in.

“No, we can dress up like the Things,” Jax suggested. “Auntie Lily will know how to give us blue hair and our cat can be Cat.”

She snorted and glanced at Anastasia in bemusement, quietly loving how much they’d loved their bedtime story — regardless of her own feelings in regards to the quality of the literature. When a person was lucky enough to slip inside a story, to slip entirely inside an imaginary world, the pains of this world disappeared... that much she knew only too well. For as long as the story went on, reality no longer existed.

“Maybe one day,” Anastasia laughed, kissing her forehead, “when you’re both old enough to take care of a cat by yourselves.”

“What about a dog like The Grinch?,” Jax prodded as Kamilah kissed his cheek and dutifully kissed each one of his stuffed animals and bid them all sweet dreams — to ensure none would be left out, naturally. 

“Absolutely not,” she huffed. “We all know who will somehow wind up walking it—“

“Uncle Adrian or Mathew?,” Zahra yawned, opening her arms to give Kamilah a hug as she and Anastasia switched children. The remark was innocent but she couldn’t help but laugh at it. Indeed, if their family had to expand by one more member Adrian or Mathew would more than likely wind up the unofficial dog nanny.

She had to admire their dedication when it came to asking for a variety of pets, though. It seemed everybody wanted to believe in impossible things, she supposed, to persuade themselves that miracles could happen. The mere fact that the children existed at all was a miracle in and of itself, so she would certainly never say never... but she did not plan to indulge their desires until she was old enough to have them promise her in writing that they would take responsibility for all of the animal care.

“Your Auntie Serafine doesn’t like dogs,” Anastasia giggled between kissing each of Jax’s stuffed animals. Each night he somehow seemed to accumulate more that neither of them could recall buying to tuck into bed beside him. “She wouldn’t want to come over to play with you as often as she does now if we had a dog.”

Kamilah snorted and flashed her wife a grateful look between the kisses she was placing on Zahra’s favourite stuffed unicorn plushies. Serafine didn’t like dogs because she couldn’t penetrate their minds to find out what they were thinking and that made her nervous for some odd reason — it didn’t matter that Anastasia had explained that most dogs were rather simple creatures, the nullifying of her abilities didn’t sit well with her in the slightest.

“What about... a giraffe?,” Jax asked, holding up his toy giraffe by the name of Edwin he had gotten at The Bronx Zoo. “They’re herbivores.”

“They’d destroy my garden then,” she chuckled. “And as I once told mommy, I am not sure it is legal to build a private zoo on a Manhattan rooftop.”

“But the mortals wouldn’t have to know,” Zahra stated matter of factly, “because mommy can play with their minds so they don’t see it and it could be our secret.”

She and Anastasia snorted, both of them remembering when The Bloodkeeper had once said the exact same thing when she’d broached the idea of running a whole zoo to satisfy her love of animals. The twins may have developed her love of weapons, but this was all Annie. 

“I’m a perfectly law abiding citizen, thank you very much,” Anastasia gasped, feigning offence.

“The mortals follow your laws but they don’t know it,” Zahra said.

“Who told you that?,” Kamilah asked. The twins knew very little about Clan politics and the council which Anastasia chaired, and they certainly knew absolutely nothing about the extent of their involvement in the mortal world.

“Auntie Lily said the mortals are dummies who can’t rule themselves without their policemen killing innocent people and making reality TV stars president, so the vampires pull the strings in their world but they don’t know it. Like in Japan how The Five were before the revolution only they know about us now,” Jax explained as articulately as he was able. “And she said that mommy is like the dragon queen from a TV show before she went batshit and that you’re her dragon, mama.”

“Language,” Anastasia snorted. “Batshit is a swear word I’d prefer you didn’t drop at the age of five.”

“Auntie Lily said it, not me,” Jax smirked. “I don’t even know what batshit means.”

“Is that why the mortals call you the vampire queen and like you so much, mommy?,” Zahra asked.

Anastasia sighed and Kamilah could tell she was weighing her words as her glacial eyes drifted towards the purple and orange lava lamp nightlight that sat on the nightstand between their beds. For a long moment she was silent, the wheels in her powerful mind simply turning as she tried to figure out exactly how much she should tell them.

Right now, they didn’t need to know her true involvement in the general runnings of the world or the reasons why most societies eventually internally combusted. Without a stable figurehead lurking in the shadows and strictly enforcing a code of honour, society never did the right thing — especially one in which mortals thought themselves all powerful. It was not a dictatorship by any means, though Anastasia had made it clear to the mortals that if they ever had to start with their ridiculous power games, their nuclear weapons, their needless wars, their sickening genocides, or if they ever tried to demonise the vampire community as they’d done to so many other minorities, that they would be starting a war with her that they would be powerless to win. She made the leaders of the mortal world scared, and made sure that they — and everyone outside of their family — truly knew next to nothing about the extent of her abilities, and because of that the rumour mill had been churning and people had been behaving rather well.

Something that Kamilah had learned in her life was that sometimes people did the right thing. Sometimes one person made a stark difference in the runnings of the world. But civilisation had to have a very strict set of rules in order to thrive and sustain itself, and those with power had to learn them well — never be selfish, never be disconnected from the common people, never overestimate your own power.

When Anastasia spoke, her voice was as gentle as ever. “The mortals call me the vampire queen and like me because before you were born we saved the world a few times — and I lost my mortal life in one of those battles. They respect that and like to think I was noble enough that I did it for them, rather than to save the lives of the people I care about.”

“And mama Turned you?,” Jax whispered, glancing at Kamilah.

She swallowed thickly, her blood running cold at the mere memory of her beloved dying in her arms... at her blood covering her body and spilling across the floor. When she thought of that night it felt like she was left with nothing but death, the irreducible fact of ones own mortality. Death after a long illness people could generally accept with resignation or the belief that said death was a kindness. Even accidental death people could easily ascribe to fate. But for a woman to die of no apparent cause, for a woman to die simply because she was a woman, or by the hand of another, brought us so close to the invisible boundary between life and death that people no longer knew which side they were on. Life became death, and it was as if said death had owned one’s life all along. Death without warning. Which was to say: life stopped. 

And it could stop at any moment.

She hadn’t even noticed her hands had started to tremble until Anastasia reached across the space between their beds to affectionately squeeze her thigh. Even after all this time, after everything she’d been through in her long life, she couldn’t easily think of that night without feeling nauseous. Just thinking about it made her feel like she had jumped off the edge of a steep cliff, and then, at the very last moment, something reached out and caught her in midair when Anastasia would steady her... even if it was doing something as simple as giving her thigh a squeeze to remind her that she was safe. That was what Kamilah had come to define as love. It was the one thing that could stop her from falling, powerful enough to defy the laws of gravity.

“I did,” she said quietly. “Mommy was hurt very badly and it was the only way I could save her.”

The twins nodded, thankfully happy with that brief explanation of Anastasia’s death for now. She wanted it to be a good long while before they ever learned the name Gaius Augustine.

“And the other battles?,” Zahra prodded.

“I had to face the first vampire, Rheya Apostolous,” Anastasia sighed, pausing for a moment. “We are the direct descendants of her and Demetrius, who was the first Feral. Their daughter, Iola, was the first Bloodkeeper... and I the last when I became the first vampire Bloodkeeper.” 

Both twins audibly gasped. 

“We’re part Feral?!,” laughed Zahra. “Cool! We can be zombies next halloween!”

Kamilah snorted and continued. “Mommy was the only one strong enough to defeat her and the battle had been prophesied beforehand. She saved the world and then revolutionised it in the wake of her success... because of what she did, our kind no longer has to hide.”

“I am a bridge between the mortal and vampire worlds,” Anastasia clarified. “I keep the peace on both sides with the help of the council and your Uncle Adrian’s work in politics in the mortal world... but I make it no secret where my loyalties will always lie.”

“I’m glad to be alive now when people are so kind,” Jax said, “because I don’t think I’d like hiding very much.”

“I like showing off my red eyes,” Zahra said, her blue eyes bleeding into a glowing shade of crimson. “They match my hair and my favourite red shoes! I’d be sad if I couldn’t have red eyes whenever I want.”

Kamilah caressed their daughters cheek. “That’s why we do what we do on the council, you understand. We make sure that the world will always be safe for you to be who and what you are without shame.”

After one last hug and kiss for each child she and Anastasia tip toed out of their bedroom to allow them to get a good rest.

She heaved a sigh as she sat down on the couch and handed her wife a glass of wine. She hadn’t even had to double check if she wanted one or not, knowing instinctively that they both did after remembering such unpleasant things and having to render them into age appropriate tales.

They’d promised themselves and each other that they would never be the sort of parents that they’d each had. The sort who’d deem a child too young to understand things they were already naturally asking questions about, figuring it was better to encourage their children to come to them and know that they’d always be taken seriously rather than have them eventually using Google to search up their war stories.

“I think we handled that well,” Anastasia said, clinking her glass against hers. “They didn’t seem upset by anything we said...”

“Indeed. I think we satisfied them just the right amount for now.” She took a sip of her wine, her eyes drifting to the family photos that decorated the once very cold and clinical living room.

Her life now was everything she had spent more than two thousand years thinking would never happen to her, that could not happen to her, that she was the only person in the world to whom none of these things would ever happen, and then, one by one, they all began to happen to her, in the same way they happened to everyone else. Everything she had now was worlds away from who she’d once been... and she feared ever losing that. She feared her children ever looking at her and seeing the monster that she’d been for the majority of her life.

“I still don’t know how I’ll ever explain myself to them, though,” she whispered, hanging her head in shame on Anastasia’s shoulder. “Annie... you know all I have done... you bear my memories and the memories of others as surely as if they were your own. How can I— How do you make peace with those images of me and love me as tenderly as you do?”

Anastasia guided her face into the crook of her neck. “As the Bloodkeeper, it’s not my place to judge the things that I see or to use the things that I know against people. I must remain impartial. My job is to protect the history of our kind and to use my abilities to leave this world better than I found it... no more and no less.” She gently stroked her hair. “I can see your whole life, Kami, the good and the bad. I can feel the intensity of your emotions and the complete lack of them you suffered for so long. I not only see what you’ve done but I can understand why you did what you did... probably just as much as you can because I am viewing it through the vantage point of history. And you’ve worked so hard to better yourself, to make up for the things you did—“

“But I still did them...”

“Yes, you did.” Anastasia nodded. “But I’ll let you in on a secret: there are very few people in this world who are truly evil. Each of us are so complex that what most people consider ‘evil’ depends on nothing more than where they’re standing. And those few people who are truly just rotten to the core, they don’t try to change. They don’t feel guilty about the terrible things they’ve done.” She paused and kissed her hair, then whispered, “You’re a very courageous person, Kami, and you have a much gentler heart than you give yourself credit for having.”

At that point, Kamilah broke down, sobbing into her wife’s shoulder as the floodgates opened. She hated it... she hated remembering. It pained her to know how much of her had remained in the earliest days of her life as a vampire, and to know how much of her was no longer there. She was perpetrator and witness and victim, both actor and audience in a theatre of one. She could follow the progress of her own dismemberment. Piece by piece, she could watch herself disappear if she thought of the atrocities she’d committed.

“I still— I was so horrible, Annie—“

“You suffered in silence for so long.” Anastasia gently stroked her hand up and down the length of her back. “When I look at you, I see a good woman who refuses to believe she's good regardless of how much she’s changed... but only the good doubt their own goodness, which is what makes them good in the first place. The bad know they are good, but the good know nothing. They spend their lives forgiving others for everything under the sun, but they can't forgive themselves.”

She huffed and nuzzled her face against her neck. Bit by bit, she found herself relaxing into the conversation. Anastasia had a natural talent for drawing people out of themselves, and it was easy to fall in with her, to feel comfortable in her presence. “Will they ever understand my past?”

“When it comes time for them to learn about the history of our kind and the role Gaius played, they’re obviously going to be shocked by the role both you and Adrian played at his side. The woman they know you as and the woman you were at his side aren’t even remotely similar, so they’ll have to make their peace with that... and that’s where I can — with your permission — project a few of your memories and help them really understand why you did what you did.” She dragged her thumb across her cheekbone. “They love you so much, sweetheart, and that’s not something that will ever be turned off. You are an amazing, amazing mother. It might be difficult for them to make their peace with but I promise you that in time they will understand.”

“You’re the only three people alive who have never looked at me like I’m some sort of monster,” she whispered. “Even after you learned the extent of my sins you never once shied away from me... and as much as I know they have to find out eventually... I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready for the moment they look at me any differently than they do now.”

Anastasia kissed her forehead. “There’s every chance they’ll react as I did—“

“And there’s every chance they will not...”

“It often happens that things are other than what they seem or what you think they will be, and you can get yourself into trouble by jumping to conclusions. We’re raising them to be the best of both of us. I have faith that they’ll actually take it much better than you think.” She drew back to look her in the eye. “Every life is inexplicable. No matter how many facts are reiterated, no matter how many details are given, the essential things resist telling in most cases. To say that so and so was born here and went there, that she did this and did that, that she married this woman and had these children, that she lived, that she owns these books or fought in this battle or designed that building — none of that tells us very much. When the time comes that they’re old enough to understand, you’re going to have to be as brutally honest and vulnerable as you were with me... regardless of how uncomfortable it is.”

“I know,” she whispered, “and that’s what scares me almost as much as them finding out about my reign of terror as Gaius’ puppet queen. I... I don’t want them to look at me and know what he did to me. To know that I was so weak that I tolerated his abuse and was actually foolish enough to confuse it with an honest and true love—“ She cut herself off with a sob that she couldn’t hold back and practically collapsed in Anastasia’s arms. “I walked around the world like a ghost, and sometimes I questioned whether I even existed. Whether I'd ever existed at all beyond my own torment.”

It was so difficult to speak of that time in her life to anyone, but it was easier to speak to Anastasia than it was to anybody else. Not only because she felt safe with her and didn’t have to filter her words, but because she understood what she meant when she said that the world hadn’t been real to her anymore past a certain point. Everything in it was a fraudulent copy of what it should have been, and everything that happened in it shouldn’t have been happening. For a long time she had lived under the spell of this illusion, sleepwalking through her long nights and struggling to fall asleep when the sun rose, sick of a world she had stopped believing in and should never have been alive to see, doubting everything that presented itself to her lifeless eyes.

The Bloodkeeper wrapped her up tighter in her embrace. Kamilah simply clung to her as tightly as she could. Her arms were clutching at her now, twining around her smaller frame. She was trying to draw her in, and she didn't even know what she was doing... it seemed her body was moving of its own accord. She was drowning in instinct, and just knew that on the exceedingly rare occasions she became distressed enough to shed tears Anastasia was the one she needed. 

She felt safe in her arms, knowing that she wouldn’t think less of her or seek to punish her for sobbing in her presence. Anastasia was soft and tender, and she could soothe with a single touch. 

It had never been possible for her to be where she was like this with anyone else. For as long as Kamilah had lived, she had been somewhere else, between here and there. But never really here. And never really there.

Anastasia’s touch grounded her in the moment.

“You are not weak and you never have been,” Anastasia whispered with absolute conviction in her ear as she cradled her face against her neck. “What he did to you was not your fault. Not one moment of that was your fault... and we are raising two people who will tell you the exact same thing.”

She nodded tearfully. “There was a moment not long after I Turned when I realised my sorrow, the regret of a restless, doomed spirit, rang in my voice. I was uneasy with his lifestyle but still wanted to impress him... I remember wondering if my fate was to helplessly watch the violence until I became as mad as the man who committed the murders — and I did. Whether the mental or the physical violence I was subjected to explains it or not... I did... and part of that is owning up to my own misdeeds.”

“It’s not an easy part of it at all,” Anastasia confirmed, gently wiping away her tears. “But if it’s any consolation at all, I will be at your side the whole time. You’ll never have to fight these demons alone. I’m always going to be right here.” She kissed her brow. “It was. It will never be again. Remember it and that way you won’t ever make the same mistakes again. We find ourselves only by looking to what we’re not.”

She smiled, though, she was upset enough that it was more of an agonised grimace than a smile at all. Despite still having a few years before having to explain her hand in the creation of the old vampire world to their children, she vowed to herself that she would do so as honestly as she was capable. She was no longer the same coward who’d bent to Gaius’ every whim and lost herself entirely in his desires, confusing them as her own. She’d grown. She’d changed. And she’d done so by forcing bravery from herself — and for that she was brave.

Wounds were an essential part of life, she had come to realise, and until you were wounded in some way and had to fight to overcome your torment, you could not become a strong woman.

“When did you get so good at making me feel better?,” she murmured, nuzzling her shoulder.

“Around the time you decided to stop running from happiness and let down your walls,” Anastasia stated.

“That was the most sound decision I’ve made in over two thousand years of living.” She pressed a gentle kiss to her jaw. She remembered that moment she had decided to stop keeping Anastasia at arms length and it was both perfectly calm and perfectly insane, she had been perfectly prepared to accept what the moment had offered her when they were walking in Elias’ vineyard that one ancient night. A passionate indifference of that magnitude was a rare thing and because it could be achieved only by someone ready to let go of who she was, it demanded a great deal of self respect. It inspired awe in those who gazed upon it. “It is a glorious thing to be known so completely.”

~~~~ five years earlier ~~~~

“Baby—“

“Kami, I’m fine—“

“You’re not fine,” she sighed as she tucked her under the duvet to begin her week of prescribed bedrest after one too many fainting spells and hormone induced psychic sensory overloads that left her needing to consume pints and pints of blood to recover from. “You’re far from it actually.”

Anastasia rolled her eyes and pouted her lips. When Tyler had found her on her office floor in the middle of the work day he’d rushed her to the hospital and had thankfully had the stomach to ignore her irritated assurances that all was well. He’d called Mathew, who’d pulled her from a board meeting and she’d sprinted across Manhattan to get to her side much quicker than the rush hour traffic would allow for — more than one mortal tourist stood in the middle of the sidewalk to capture a picture of The Empire State building had almost wound up impaled on her daggers for getting in her way.

Their doctor hadn’t taken long at all to diagnose her with a severely low blood pressure, which she wanted to see if a week of total mental and physical rest would help to improve. Anastasia, however, was very hormonal, stubborn, and extremely unamused by the whole thing... despite the fact she hadn’t been feeling well at all recently.

In the past week or so, she was noticing some more minor pains, small episodes of shortness of breath. Probably because she had two babies hanging off her spine, pummeling her lungs and playing soccer with her bladder now that they’d started to make their growing presence known. The usual baby games that Kamilah’s own mother had often spoke of enduring to her and Lysimachus in great detail whenever they’d been the slightest bit ungrateful for anything.

“It was just a head rush—“

“Annie,” she breathed, mentally counting to ten to try to avoid losing her temper. When this hormonal episode evened itself out she’d be able to look at the situation as rationally as she normally would but right now she was incapable of it. She’d learned the hard way that pointing out to a hormonal woman that she was being hormonal was an idea of apocalyptic proportions that would end in nothing but tears. “You scared them so much when they checked your blood pressure that they almost admitted you. Even by vampire standards you were pretty damn close to dying a second death.”

“I’m going to go crazy in this room for a whole week,” The Bloodkeeper said as her tears started once again. “And it’s not fair on you having to take care of me—“

“Do you honestly think there is anywhere I’d rather be or anything else I would rather be doing? Spending each moment at your side and ensuring that all three of you are well is no chore. I’m happy to be with you every moment, doing what I can to pull my weight in this,” she assured her. “We’ll watch whatever movies you want, read, take lots of bubble baths, finalise what we want for the nursery, finally make a list of names... whatever you want. I will even stand at the foot of the bed and try my hand at stand up comedy if that is how you wish to be entertained.”

That startled a laugh out of her.

“I may be better at this than I thought,” she beamed, “I was not even attempting to be comical. I could make a career out of this if Ahmanet ever starts to flounder.”

She started to giggle even more and weakly whacked her with one of the pillows, though tears were still flowing down her face. 

“I can’t even hit you back!” She feigned a sigh but sensed her plan to distract her from her bad mood was indeed working very well, so she intended to keep it going for as long as it took until the hormones settled. When logic failed, distractions never did. “Typical. Bloody typical. This is just like when you use your abilities to top from the bottom.”

“I mean... you could hit me back. I don’t think a pillow will do much damage.”

“Over my dead body... over my obliterated soul will I ever allow such a thing.” The declaration was a cross between a growl and a soft roar. She leaned down over her to kiss the tears from her cheeks. “There ought to be laws against such things. Hitting a pregnant woman with anything is just sadistic.”

Anastasia raised a brow. “Says the sadist...”

“Even this sadist has her limits,” she said, pouting playfully. “But... you’d better not inform anyone of that. I have a terrifying reputation to uphold, you understand.”

Anastasia drew her into a gentle kiss on the lips. “You’re a massive dork, you know that?”

“So I’ve been told.”

“I can’t believe I ever thought you were dark and mysterious.”

She huffed. “I can be very dark and mysterious.”

She started laughing again. “Okay.”

She sat back and did her utmost to radiate as much dark, detached, and dangerous energy as she possibly could. But how did one consciously act mysterious? Especially with their beloved who knew them better than anyone else in the world... was it even possible?

Judging by Anastasia’s near hysterical laughter, it was not.

“You look constipated!”

“I’m trying to prove a point—“

“By making yourself look constipated?”

She snorted. “Alright, I concede. Perhaps I’m not as tall, dark, and mysterious as I once was.”

“You’re a heavily armed teddy bear with fangs.”

“You are the only who can say such things to me and escape with all of their limbs intact, I will have you know,” she chuckled. “I’m starting to realise that after a certain amount of time with no discipline," she raised a hand to playfully shake a finger at her, "you have an attitude problem — a serious one."

"I certainly do,” Anastasia laughed, playfully poking her tongue out at her. “Your attitude is a huge problem for me... so you better start thinking now about all the ways you’ll put me in my place once I’m back in action.”

“I’m sure I’ll think of a way that will be truly riveting for us both, darling.” 

Anastasia sighed softly as she reached out to stroke a hand across her stomach, her azure eyes flickering closed for a few seconds at the contact. “I think I might’ve been a little hormonal earlier,” she said after a moment.

“What gave it away?,” she lightly teased, bending down to kiss her stomach. “The fact that you blamed the lighting in your office for you fainting and wanted to bulldoze the skyscraper in order to build a new one, or the fact that you started crying when the nurse at the hospital complimented your shoes?”

The Bloodkeeper huffed. “It was actually the fact I suggested using my abilities to float myself around on a bed for a week so I could still go about my business but technically still be on bed rest.”

“Ah,” she nodded, “a wicked idea, I admit, and one I would normally encourage as you know how I adore your healthy disregard for authority. However, in this instance the idea was truly horrifying... and not laughing when you seriously declared that this is what you’d do was the hardest thing I’ve done in a long time.”

Anastasia covered her face with her hands and groaned. “I’m so sorry, Kami. I genuinely think I’m going crazy.”

“You’re not. Crazy people never think they're crazy. You're sane just by the virtue of the question,” she replied. “Hormones are difficult things to bear but you’re doing wonderfully.”

Anastasia caressed her cheek. “Why are you so good to me?”

She turned to kiss her wrist. “Because that is what love is... when you get as much pleasure from giving pleasure as you do from receiving it.”

At that, the hormones struck again and Anastasia started bawling.

“There, there,” she laughed, drawing her into her arms. 

“I can’t even drink but I feel like I need a drink! You’re so sweet and it makes me emotional!,” Anastasia half laughed, half sobbed.

“Would you like me to continue to try to be tall, dark, and mysterious?,” she smirked. “Because I can certainly do it. Though I warn you, I may give you a stomach ache from laughing because evidently my acting is so pitiful.”

Her heartfelt offer thankfully made her laugh but the hormonal flood of tears continued. “Can you just hold me— and can we order garlic bread?”

“Garlic bread?,” she echoed.

Anastasia nodded. “I still haven’t forgiven Adrian for leading me to believe vampires couldn’t eat it and— with cheese. Garlic bread with cheese but it has to be warm— and B-Positive to dip like ketchup.”

She snorted, tightening her arms around her and then wriggled to pull her phone out of the pocket of her work trousers. “I will see to it that you have the best garlic bread in the city. I’m certain Mathew and Lily have strong garlic bread opinions that will make finding one to satisfy your cravings an easy enough feat.”

Anastasia laughed as she started and new group chat with just Lily and Mathew and typed: _My wife wishes for garlic bread with cheese. Where makes one that is worthy of her and my unborn children?_

“Why is the way you text so weirdly hot?,” Anastasia giggled.

“You’re supposed to be resting,” she teased. “Reel it in.”

“The fact that I can’t even have sex this week—“ she cut herself off with an irritated sigh and Kamilah kissed her brow. “What am a I supposed to do if I get really horny? Like, the hormones make me really fucking horny!”

She huffed in amusement, resting a hand on her belly. “Try thinking of Lily. That’s what I do when I find myself desiring you at inappropriate moments and it dries me right up.”

Anastasia started laughing and buried her face in her chest. “Does it really?”

“Indeed. However, I often find myself thinking of things I’ve yet to lecture her for and it sours my mood considerably... so perhaps thinking of something less irritating may help. Garlic bread. Egg fried rice. Penguins. Things that bring you joy.”

“Once I’m allowed out of bed I might ask Lil to go to the zoo with me one day so I can see the penguins. It might be dumb but they make me happy—“

“I’ll go,” she offered wholeheartedly. Her wife’s love of the animal was something she found oddly endearing.

Anastasia’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “You never want to go.”

“I mean it, I’ll go with you.” She kissed her hair. “We can eat anywhere you’d like after and perhaps even look at baby clothes in Saks— we’ll make a day of it.”

“I’m going to start crying again,” Anastasia laughed.

She tightened her arms around her. “Just let it out. I’ve got you. I’ve always got you.”

Kamilah still found it extraordinary that on some days she was still flooded with a happiness so intense, a happiness so naturally and harmoniously at one with the world, that she could feel herself alive in the present, a present that surrounded her and permeated her, that broke through her with the sudden, overwhelming knowledge that she was alive. And the happiness she discovered within herself at those moments, like this one, was extraordinary.


	6. unbreak the broken, unsay these spoken words.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by; Train Wreck (acoustic version) by James Arthur.

The Dark Solstice: the darkest and the happiest time of the year. No sooner had mortals woken up in the morning than they felt the days beginning to slip away from them, allowing the vampires of the world to roam free for much longer than they normally could. 

There was no natural light to sink one’s fangs into at Ebenezer’s castle once the sun set, with only the golden glow of the holiday decorations to light their nights, and no sense of time unfolding. Rather, there was a feeling of doors being shut, of locks being turned. Despite it being the most social occasion on the vampire calendar, it was also an odd sort of hermetic season, a long moment of inwardness. The outer world, the tangible world of mortals and bodies, would come to seem no more than an emanation of their minds as they indulged in the traditional festivities — and the children made it that much more magical.

“I think our Elf On The Shelf might be a vampire,” Jax whispered to Kamilah as they inspected the naughty elf’s antics. The odd little doll was sat on a throne made out of bags of blood, holding two of her favourite daggers to guard its loot — a macabre display by mortal standards, perhaps, but a very Sayeed way of making merry in the eyes of all who knew their family. 

“We should leave blood for Santa this year instead of wine,” Zahra state matter of factly. Kamilah inwardly sighed at the notion, having grown extremely proud of herself when she’d convinced the kids that Santa would be much more grateful for a glass of wine than he would a glass of milk — and she certainly did appreciate the fact they insisted on pouring it themselves and always wound up filling the glass to the rim. “Think about it, he has to be a vampire because he’s so old and wrinkly.”

“I think you’re right,” Jax agreed. “There’s no way a mortal could move so quickly to visit every house in the world in one night... and he must be psychic to make his reindeer fly.”

“And the elves are his clan!,” Zahra squealed, beyond thrilled to have cracked the age old mystery. “Right, mommy? You can see his memories, can’t you?”

Anastasia practically choked on the mouthful of piping hot chai tea she was drinking on the couch and nodded as convincingly as she could. “Of course— you two did an awesome job figuring that out together.”

Both twins seemed to stand up a little taller at the praise as Kamilah smiled softly. She realised now that she turned to her family as a form of consolation, to give her life a meaning and a purpose it had otherwise been lacking. She did all she could to ensure that they were not the beneficiaries of her ancient unhappiness, to ensure that were all well loved, especially well loved, without question deeply loved. That first of all, that above and beyond everything else there might be to say about her one day: she was an ardent wife and a dedicated mother to their children during their infancy and early childhood, that whatever good in them when they grew, whatever strengths they might possess, would come from this moment in time before they could even know who they were.

“We should visit the North Pole vampires like we visit the ones in Japan,” Jax said. “The elves must be adults trapped in little bodies like Kano, I think... and he’s very funny... but his ears aren’t pointy so he can’t be an elf— I’d like to make friends with elf vampires.”

“A lovely idea,” Kamilah said, thinking on her feet, “however, they have so much work to do throughout the year to ensure there are enough gifts for everybody that we wouldn’t wish to distract them. Santa expects nothing but greatness from his tiny servants— I mean from his clan of... vampiric elves.”

“That makes sense,” nodded Zahra. “He visits mortals too... she he must be very busy.”

“Indeed,” she nodded, her tone entirely serious. 

“Why don’t mortals have their own Santa if they have day and night all backwards, though?,” Jax prodded. “Their presents are delivered when we’re up and they open them after our bedtime. Does Santa come back to New York to deliver our presents when the sun rises?”

Kamilah gaped at Anastasia. 

None of the parenting books they’d read had prepared them for these sort of questions.

None of the parenting books had prepared them for anything that came with actually raising children.

“Yeah,” Anastasia nodded. “That’s it exactly. He comes back once he’s sure every vampire is sleeping and delivers the presents.”

“But why do the mortals leave him milk and not blood?,” Zahra asked. “Do they not know he must be very tired and that it’s polite to offer a hungry friend some blood?”

“Maybe he gets really hungry and bites them but they don’t know it because they’re sleeping,” Jax mused.

“Santa isn’t biting mortals while they’re sleeping, honey,” Anastasia said whilst seriously struggling to hold a straight face. “He’s a very good vampire who knows that biting a mortal without their permission is a very, very bad thing to do and there are like a hundred laws against it—“

“But what if the mortal says he can feed from them?,” Zahra asked. “Then you can look at his memories and see he’s telling the truth if he accidentally kills the mortal.”

“If he accidentally kills the mortal,” Kamilah chuckled below her breath. 

God. 

That was such a Zahra thing to say— delightfully odd child that she was. When she was two, and she and Anastasia had began sending their kids to day care for a couple of hours every day so they could focus solely on work. After a few weeks, their teacher called them and said that she was worried about her. When it was time for the children to have their blood bags, Zahra would always hang back and observe until all the other kids had taken a bag before she'd take one for herself. The teacher had not understood what she was doing. Go get your blood, she'd say to Zahra, but she would always wait around until there was just one bag left. 

It took a while for anybody to figure it out. 

Zahra didn't know which bag was supposed to be her blood. She thought all the other kids knew which ones were theirs, and if she waited until there was only one bag left in the bank, that one had to be hers. She was a little weird — but the same kind of bizarrely intelligent weird that Anastasia was. Not like very many other people. A complete and utter free spirit who marched to the beat of her own drum and thought deeply about things that most others didn’t give a second thought.

“I— Um— Then I guess it would be okay,” stammered Anastasia. “There are no laws against feeding from a consenting mortal.”

“But what if the mortal tries to stake him?” Zahra demonstrated the correct movements that Kamilah had shown her when teaching her to dodge and block a stake heading for her heart. “It could be a mean mortal he’s delivering presents to. Then he can stab it, right?”

Kamilah snorted. “Them, honey. Not it.”

Anastasia cleared her throat a few times to try and prevent herself from laughing out loud. “Self defence is always fine... but, um, Santa isn’t stabbing anybody when he’s delivering the presents. He’s Santa... everybody likes Santa.”

“Except the people who don’t celebrate the Dark Solstice or— what is the mortal Dark Solstice called?,” Jax said.

“Christmas,” Kamilah laughed. “They call it Christmas.”

“That’s silly,” Zahra concluded. “Everybody knows it’s really the Dark Solstice because of the Winter Solstice... our teacher told us that in school.”

All she could do was laugh as Anastasia somehow wound up explaining the ins and outs of the mortal holiday and the religion of Christianity to the children. They did their best to expose them to mortal traditions and their way of life but they were so far removed from the world of mortal religions that their children became offended by thinking the Pope had copied one of Rihanna’s Met Gala looks upon seeing a picture of him. Their kids certainly knew Rihanna thanks to Anastasia and their Auntie Lily... but they were utterly mystified by religion.

She’d wait a few years before explaining the morbid religious stories she’d grown up with in Egypt. There was absolutely no way she could handle a discussion about why so many of the gods seemed to marry their offspring or siblings— and she certainly did not ever plan to inform them that if their grandparents hadn’t been enlightened enough to be repulsed by the notion, she’d have been forcibly married to her own twin as a child.

She snorted into the coffee mug in her hand and sat down beside her wife on the couch when the twins attention span eventually ran out and they went back to the Where’s Waldo book they were working on completing. “That conversation will go down in history as one of our finest moments of parenting.”

Anastasia clinked her cup against hers. “Only our children would think Santa Claus is running around stabbing people— that’s all you, by the way.”

“Isn’t it glorious?,” she beamed. “What did you think of my Elf On The Shelf display, by the way?”

“It’s more like Murderous Holiday Demon On The Shelf than Elf On The Shelf,” giggled Anastasia. “The thing literally looks like Chucky.”

“I understood that reference,” she said excitedly. It’d come as quite a shock to Kamilah how much she actually enjoyed horror films... even though literally nobody else had been the slightest bit surprised that she loved the blood, gore, and violence. “I think we can both agree that the mortals were much too soft in their advertising of the product. Being outrageous and borderline inappropriate is what makes it fun.”

“You dork.”

She smirked, puffing up at the teasing term of endearment as she leaned in to kiss her. There was no better thing in the world than to be kissed in the way Anastasia was kissing her back, this was without argument the single most important justification for being alive, Kamilah felt.

As they broke apart, the look in her dark eyes told Anastasia that under any other circumstances, she would either already be naked with her on top of her, or draped over her thighs to be spanked for her bratty behaviour. It was a look that nobody but the two of them could decipher, a silent conversation made up of a few quirks of their eyebrows and a twinkle that passed between their eyes.

Before either of them could speak again, the children’s laughter drew their attention and Kamilah’s filthy expression meant for her wife’s eyes only softened considerably. Jax and Zahra reminded her far too much of how she and Lysimachus had been at the very same age; an inseparable duo.

She wasn't often able to think about Lysi directly or summon him up in any conscious way without getting upset, but as she watched their children put together their puzzles and playing with their Lego pieces, building evermore complex and baroque structures, she felt that she was temporarily inhabiting her own childhood once again. Carrying on his life for him by seeing her own children repeating the gestures they had made more than two thousand years ago when they’d been children themselves.

For a long moment she simply watched them playing and giggling together with her wife nestled against her side. Everything had changed for her in this past century, and words that she had never understood before suddenly had begun to make sense. This came as revelation, and when she finally had time to absorb it in odd moments like this that would otherwise seem to have no real significance, she wondered how she had managed to live so long without learning this simple thing. It was not desire so much as knowledge, the discovery that two people who adored one another, through desire, could create a thing more powerful and more beautiful than either of them could create alone.

~~~~ five years earlier ~~~~

When one had lived as long as Kamilah had, they tended to think that they have heard everything, that there was simply nothing left that could shock them anymore. They grew a little complacent about their so-called knowledge of the world, but then, every once in a while, something came along that jolted her out of her smug cocoon of superiority, that reminded her all over again that she did not understand the first thing about life.

They had found out that they were having a set of healthy fraternal twins with no obvious signs of any genetic heart defects.

A boy and a girl.

Just like her and Lysimachus.

Exactly what they both had hoped for.

Despite their personal elation, the day to day runnings of the vampire community didn’t stop simply because they were expecting a son and a daughter. Now more than ever, there was an incredible amount of work to be done to ensure that the world was a safe place for vampires to exist.

Council meetings had always been incredibly taxing, even when Kamilah had been at the helm of the old world. Clan politics and grievances could drive a saint to madness, and then there was the relationships that required fostering with the mortal world, the other vampire councils of the world, and the other supernatural sects. It was not an easy thing for anybody to sit through, never mind a pregnant woman.

“The United Nations assembly still want a full breakdown of your abilities. They’ve been asking me everyday for the past fifteen years,” Adrian said to Anastasia. “I’ve done what I can to stave them off... but they don’t seem to understand that not even we know exactly what you’re capable of.”

“Refer them to Lily’s movie series,” Anastasia deadpanned, her eyes scanning the most powerful vampires in Manhattan sitting around the Raines Corp conference table and then flickering to the councils from around the world listening on a Zoom call. “And anybody in this meeting who is curious, I suggest watching Bloodbound Three... because that is as much as you will ever need to know about what I can do until a situation calls for me to reveal more.”

“I don’t understand why you won’t just tell us,” The Evolved said over Zoom.

“Insurance,” Anastasia shrugged. “For myself, my family, and for the entire community. Mortals are the most dangerous creatures in the world and we need them to fear retaliation from me at the slightest inclination of them trying to demonise us in order for all of us to be safe—“

“Still,” Henry Zhang interjected, “the lack of trust that your secrecy insinuates is rather disturbing.”

The Bloodkeeper glared at him. What people saw when she appeared before them in these meetings was not really her, but a person she had invented, an artificial creature she could manipulate in order to manipulate others for the greater benefit of their society. Anastasia herself remained invisible, a puppeteer working the strings of her alter-ego from a dark, solitary place behind the emerald curtain.

“Then by all means, replace me,” Anastasia challenged whilst drumming her fingernails stubbornly against the marble tabletop, regarding everybody the way the gods in ancient greek tales looked down from their mountain and shrugged at humanity, “and see how quickly relations with the mortals fall apart.”

A chorus of sighs echoed throughout the room and over the Zoom call. Anastasia was respected, loved, and feared in equal parts because she blatantly refused to openly declare how powerful she was. Her continued refusals to talk about her abilities kept the vampire societies in the world safe, as both the mortals and other supernatural sects feared any sort of retaliation from her that they’d be powerless to fight against should they bring any harm to their society.

Knowledge was power.

But in the wrong hands, knowledge was trouble.

Everybody was well aware that she could read and control the minds of anything with a pulse, that she could make things float in midair and see into the memories of every vampire who’d ever lived... but that was as far as mortal knowledge went. Witches knew that she seemed to have a natural immunity to their magic and werewolves knew that her blood could cure their bite, the same way it could cure the bite of a Feral or a burn from the sun in other vampires. That was as far as anybody’s knowledge went — not even Kano had been able to figure out exactly how powerful his former student’s mind and body could be once she had become the master. 

Kamilah was the only person alive who knew exactly how powerful Anastasia was. She had even been taught by her to guard her own mind with such an iron grip that not even Serafine and Kano working simultaneously could penetrate it, despite having no abilities herself. After having Rheya controlling her mind and almost killing her beloved by her command, she felt a great deal safer now that she knew with absolute certainty that Anastasia was the only person strong enough to breach its bounds... and she knew she would never do so without her expressed permission.

“Imagine knowing that you're good at something, so good that the world would be in awe of you if they could see your work, and then keeping yourself a secret from the world,” Aiko Nakamura grumbled. “We could have every other being in this world on their knees at our mercy—“

“Spoken like a true tyrant,” Kamilah fired back at her bitter ex.

“I wasn’t talking to you, Kamilah,” Aiko spat.

“You’re just salty because Kamilah found better pussy,” Lily fired back at Aiko. “Even I know that if people found out what homegirl here can do, she’d end up like Magneto in that janky ass cell underneath The Pentagon and the whole fucking world would inevitably end up like a bad Avengers/X-Men crossover fanfic on Wattpad where everybody is just balls to the walls—“

“I didn’t understand one word of that,” Aiko pouted. “What is a Wattpad? Is it some sort of newly discovered mortal venereal disease I know nothing about?”

“Magneto?,” Serafine questioned.

Lily leaned over the table towards Serafine. “Girl, when I send you movies to watch you gotta watch them all the way through instead of just watching the last ten minutes if you don’t wanna read the comics.”

“Would it not be better to learn the truth once and for all instead of living in a state of perpetual uncertainty?,” the head of the Spanish council’s financial sector based in Madrid asked, drawing them back to the matter at hand. The fool was impossible for Kamilah to take seriously, as she ran around dressed like a long forgotten ancient royal Infanta with the attitude that made one want to hurl themselves into the sun after talking to her for more than ten minutes.

“The prime minister has been badgering me constantly about you, Bloodkeeper,” the stuffy chairman of the British council based in London said. “You’re making our lives extremely difficult. You must key us in—“

“Enough!,” Anastasia growled, her hand slamming against the conference table with such force a psychic blast of energy flew across the polished marble surface and sent many Starbucks cups flying — if they hadn’t already been emptied of their contents more than one outfit would’ve been ruined. Everybody felt the statement the same way they had felt the blast of her energy the night she had defeated Rheya. It slammed into them with such a breathtaking brutality, destroying their sense of direction and balance as their chairs leapt a few inches from the ground and slammed back down. Even the people watching on Zoom seemed to flinch at how effortlessly she could disorient an entire conference full of people as things began flying around every single meeting room.

This was the first time anybody but Kamilah was finding out that she didn’t have to be in the same room as an object to move it — that she was strong enough to be in New York City and telekinetically moving objects in London, Paris, Madrid, Beirut, New Delhi, Sydney, Belfast, Edinburgh, Berlin, Tokyo, Athens, Milan, Hong Kong, Moscow, and Buenos Aires simultaneously. 

Rage surged through Anastasia, turning her glacial eyes into glistening crimson voids where even the whites could not be seen... she only ever flew into this state when she was extraordinarily angry and it wasn’t something she could easily control. Especially when she was so hormonal. Nobody else knew just how hard she had to fight to keep her own strength in check when her emotions made all that psychic energy in her bubble to the surface... nobody knew she could literally shift ocean tides and shake the earth itself if things spiralled too far and all of her energy was released at once.

This anger was inside her despite how generally calm she was — Kamilah believed constantly, as she truly hadn’t properly dealt with all the trauma she’d faced as a young mortal when she’d first become embroiled in the vampire world. Like the house that was well built and yet falling apart from within, the woman herself was calm and kind, almost supernatural in her imperturbability, and yet prey to a roiling, unstoppable force of fury within.

“There is no ‘must’ about it.” She glared at them, just daring anybody to challenge her. “I have given you my answer and my reasoning for keeping my abilities a secret— and even if I hadn’t offered you an explanation, no is a full answer. You will all respect what I have said and that’s all there is to it.”

Kamilah sat back and twirled one of her daggers artfully around her fingers, glaring at the councillors who seemed incapable of respecting her wife’s boundaries. “I couldn’t have said it better myself, darling,” she concluded, squeezing her thigh with her free hand beneath the table in the hopes it may prevent this from turning into a full hormonal meltdown in which she’d lose control of her abilities entirely. “May I take a moment to remind everybody that my wife is pregnant and that stressing her out with this blatant disregard for her right to privacy is harmful to my unborn children. You will all tone it down if you wish to keep each of your limbs intact.”

Anastasia huffed in amusement and her eyes gradually faded back to blue, and Lily let out a long, drawn out, “Damnnnn.”

A few people murmured apologies and the meeting quickly moved onto other things but Kamilah could tell that her wife’s mood had soured considerably. 

As the most powerful vampire in the world, Anastasia chaired these monthly meetings in which every major council would would meet and discuss the issues within their communities and request help from The Bloodkeeper should they need it. In these meetings she was affiliated with the New York council and Clan Sayeed in name only, remaining as impartial as she could and not showing any favouritism whilst mediating the discussions — she’d debate with her as much as she would everybody else and give her no special treatment... and Kamilah appreciated that a great deal. But it wasn’t an easy job in the slightest, especially now that she was so hormonal and highly likely to lash out at whoever dared irritate her.

However, she did the job so well that everybody was well aware that nobody could step into her shoes. What Anastasia made seem so simple seemed so complicated with the mere thought of anybody else trying to do her job. With anybody else doors closed and they moved backwards, and with Annie opportunities opened. Without her guidance in this new world order she had created everybody felt lost, at a crossroads, not knowing which path to take or exactly what their end goal was.

She was absolutely integral to their current state of peace.

Anastasia was there for everybody, and yet at the same time she was inaccessible to most people. They knew there was a secret core in her that could never be penetrated, a mysterious centre of hiddenness. To follow her was somehow to participate in that mystery, but it was also to understand that you could never really know her — and that was a price everybody was willing to pay in order to enjoy the lifestyle of freedom that they hadn’t had since their mortal lives had ended.

“Am I right to keep my abilities a secret?,” Anastasia asked her as they walked home from Raines Corp. She seemed unusually tense... and much too pensive for Kamilah’s liking.

She often spoke of how she felt guilty for keeping people in the dark. Almost like she was lying to them for the sake of lying and not because it ensured everybody’s wellbeing. The needless guilt kept her going. Anastasia was so sensitive that it was impossible for her not to blame herself for other people’s reactions that she had no control over, but even that guilt was a comfort in a distinctly odd way. It was a very human feeling, a sign that despite her grandeur she was still attached to the same world that other people lived in.

“Yes,” she said. “For the reasons we’ve frequently discussed regarding your safety and the safety of the wider community. We must maintain some mystery to have the mortals fear us just the right amount that they will not think themselves more powerful than we are. They outnumber us significantly... were they to decide to exterminate us, all of us would not stand a chance of surviving— even with your intervention many of our kind would perish.” She squeezed her hand. “And you know that the moment the US government thinks they have any sort of understanding of what you can do, they would stop at nothing to try to weaponise you... they turn everything good into a gun eventually.”

Anastasia nodded. “It’s just exhausting... and I actually hate that the only way we can truly be safe is making sure people fear me at all. I don’t like being mean.”

“I know... my gentle, lion hearted girl... but you’re not being mean. You’re protecting us,” she breathed and kissed her temple. “Gaius... he made damn sure everybody knew exactly what he was capable of at all times. When he walked into a room people sat up straighter because they had been threatened and traumatised into respecting him. When you walk into a room people sit up straighter because your accomplishments inspire their respect and your power speaks for itself — they respect you because you have earned their respect, and they fear you because their minds cannot even begin to comprehend all the wonders that you are.” She paused. “Nobody with a brain in their head thinks you a monster.”

She smiled softly. “And the others... do you think they’re upset that I don’t talk about what I can do?”

“They’re all smart enough to understand that it is simply safer that they have plausible deniability. Nobody is taking anything personally, I promise.”

“I’m going to have to hide the vast majority of what I can do from the kids until they’re old enough for me to teach them how to guard their thoughts,” Anastasia murmured. “Just for everybody’s safety... but mostly for theirs.”

Kamilah squeezed her hand tightly. “I know that’s not something you’d choose to do if you had any other choice, nor is it something I’d ask of you... but in this instance I agree that keeping them in the dark is the best course of action.”

Anastasia sighed and nodded. “Duty before heart, as it were.”

“Your dedication to doing your duty keeps us all safer than we have ever been,” she said quietly, sensing how exhausted she was. “Since my Turning vampires have needed a revolution... we have needed you. You are our revolutionary who both started and finished a long awaited war.” She squeezed her hand. “And I know it’s not easy—“

“It’s an impossible position,” Anastasia whispered.

“I know.” She sighed. “But you bear it with the strength and the courage of a thousand warriors. There is nobody else I know of who could do even half of what you do with the same amount of humility and grace.”

“Thank you, Kami.” The Bloodkeeper’s voice was fragile as she spoke, her eyes focused directly ahead of her. A crisscross of light and shadow began to form on the pavement in front of them, and it was a beautiful thing to behold, Kamilah felt, a small, unexpected gift on the heels of such sadness and pain that nobody ever really looked hard enough to see. “Really,” she added. “I don’t know how I’d bear this responsibility without you.”

“You’d do just fine,” she said. “What matters is not how well you can avoid trouble, but how you cope with trouble when it comes... and you do that because you’re smart, strong, and you have the most unshakable moral compass out of anyone I’ve ever known. I have much less to do with your ability to lead than you think.”

Anastasia shook her head and rubbed a hand over her belly. “You have much more to do with it than you realise. I would’ve lost myself to these powers that night in the opera house if you weren’t there to bring me back. You keep me grounded — No one can ever amount to anything in this life without someone else to believe in her.”

She smiled softly as her heart ached at how sad Anastasia seemed. She’d have done anything to ease the burden of her abilities and the role in society she’d been thrust into, but there was very little she could do besides being there to hold her on nights like this one when she found herself overwhelmed.

That was the trouble with one person having so much power, regardless of how noble and capable of bearing it they were. The world was too big, and after a while it started to swallow a person up... and Anastasia had reached many a point when it seemed like she simply couldn't take it anymore. All that bloody noise in her head and emptiness in her heart when the visions of the past would not stop their torment. She tried to find her bearings in it, but it was too big, the dimensions too monstrous, and sometimes, it wore her down so much it was like she just wanted to stop living — like in her mind there was no world, no present, no nothing besides horrific images of the past. It came down to that, in the end it was all a figment... but the only place it existed was in her head.

The world consisted of two realms, the visible and the invisible, and Kamilah knew that the things she couldn't see were often more real than the things she could.

“Shall we keep walking?,” she asked as they turned onto their block, sensing that Anastasia needed more time to clear her head before settling down.

The Bloodkeeper nodded gratefully. “Are you sure you don’t want to rest... it’s been a long day and an even longer night—“

“I’m here,” she interjected, wrapping a protective arm around her shoulders. “Let me be.”

Anastasia gave her the gentlest whisper of a kiss on her lips. “Okay.”

She pressed her brow against hers and echoed, “Okay.”

Their walk was a quiet one, but it was a peaceful one too. Kamilah knew well the odd powers that a walk around Manhattan before the sun rose seemed to hold.

Each time they took a long walk, they both felt as though they were leaving themselves behind, and by giving themselves up to the movement of the streets, by reducing themselves to a seeing eye, they were able to escape the obligation to think about things, and this, more than anything else, brought them a measure of peace. A salutary emptiness within. By wandering aimlessly, all places became equal and it no longer mattered where exactly they were. 

On their best walks they were able to feel that they were nowhere. And this, finally was all anybody ever asked of things when they became too much to bear: to be nowhere with the one they loved most.


	7. baby i’m right here.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by; Dusk Till Dawn by Kurt Hugo Schneider, Blake Rose, and Kirsten Collins.

“Thank god for Uncle Adrian,” Anastasia giggled, nuzzling into Kamilah’s side.

“That’s not exactly what one wishes to hear after making her wife cum.”

Anastasia’s giggling intensified. “I just meant, thank god he volunteered to take the kids to see Wicked on Broadway, otherwise we couldn’t have gotten that intense. You can relax that pretty little domme ego of yours.”

She playfully nipped at her bottom lip. “Not even ten minutes ago you were blindfolded, tied up within an inch of your life with a dagger at your throat, and so deep into your sub space that you could hardly construct a coherent sentence... and you’re already teasing me? Unbelievable.”

“You love it,” beamed the redhead. 

Kamilah smiled softly as she stroked the wispy strands of hair framing her face as she held her in her arms, showering her in as much praise and affection as she could dish out. She did indeed love that she’d married the brattiest woman she’d ever known. She loved it a great deal, but she also gave as good as she got. “And whatever would give you that impression, my darling?”

“Judging by your reactions on the five — six? — separate times I ate you out tonight, you love it.”

She kissed her forehead and the blissful aftershocks still throbbing in her most sensitive places at the memory felt wonderful. “I still can hardly even comprehend I’m capable of feeling like that— so safe and desired and just... known well enough that you actually understand what I need and what I like.”

Anastasia caressed her cheek. “Making you feel good is one of my favourite parts of nights like this, you know.”

She shifted so that their brows were pressed together on Anastasia’s pillow, their gazes locked and their naked bodies so entwined they felt more like one single being than two. And she whispered, “I know it is... and I love that it is more than I can even express.”

“Wanna know what my most favourite part is, though?,” murmured Anastasia.

“Mm?,” she hummed against her lips as the pleasant exhaustion seeped into the marrow of her ancient bones.

“This.” They were so close that her lips lightly brushed against hers as she spoke. “You’re so cuddly.”

She huffed in amusement. Cuddly. That was a compliment she’d certainly never received from anybody else.

The world might just stop if anybody found out Kamilah Sayeed was indeed very partial to snuggling up in her wife’s arms at every available opportunity to do so.

Her reputation would never recover from such a truth leaking to the general public.

“You’re just so magnificently huggable,” she smirked.

Anastasia nuzzled against her and let out a happy sigh. It wasn’t often that they could indulge in power exchanges quite as... extreme... as they had on that evening. Anything that would take more than a few moments to get Anastasia out of whilst the kids were home and liable to walk in on unannounced was a no go— as despite the fact that Anastasia could easily erase any traumatic memories, their moral compasses simply didn’t align with being careless enough that doing such a thing would be necessary. However, close calls did happen and on one occasion they’d almost been disturbed whilst Anastasia was Collared on the end of a leash, cuffed, blindfolded, and draped over her lap being spanked... Kamilah had had no other option but to practically throw her under the bed to keep her completely hidden whilst she’d ushered their son out of their room to fetch him a glass of water.

So evenings like this where they could go all out without the fear of unintentionally subjecting their children to any mental trauma were incredibly lovely and something that they both cherished.

Kamilah pressed a kiss to her brow and focused on the comforting beat of her heart. 

“I love you, Kami,” whispered Anastasia.

“As I love you,” she murmured back. “Always.”

The world was such an unpredictable place. Things happened so suddenly, so unexpectedly. All anybody wanted was to feel they were in control of their existence. In some ways they were, in some ways they were not — but here, in moments like these, Kamilah felt remarkably in control of things... in spite of how big and world altering her feelings for the woman in her arms continued to grow with each passing moment.

Laying there naked in that bed with her beloved, everything felt so good to her, so perfectly in accord with how she had always imagined the moments after sex should feel, that it was just another moment in her life that her current reality and what she had imagined for most of her life were now identical, absolutely and as never before one and the same thing. Which had to make it another of the happiest moments of her long life so far, she believed, since Kamilah was not someone who subscribed to the notion that desire fulfilled was desire disappointed, at least not in this case, where wanting Annie was no good without having Annie want her, and the miracle was that she did want her just as ardently, and therefore desire fulfilled was in fact desire fulfilled, the chance to spend a few blissful moments in the ephemeral kingdom of earthly grace.

They didn’t have too long to simply bask in the afterglow of their lovemaking, as there was the matter of aftercare that was of the utmost importance, and they also each required a shower once Anastasia could stand and there was a considerable amount of clean up to do before the children returned home. It was Kamilah’s least favourite part of intense scenes. Even with Anastasia’s abilities to make the clean up easier, changing sheets and starting loads of laundry was never an enjoyable task.

However, when Jax and Zahra bounded back into the penthouse with Adrian, her spirits lifted a great deal. The three of them were wearing matching Wicked T-shirts and singing show tunes at the top of their lungs. Zahra was sat on her Uncle’s shoulders and Jax was swinging from his strong arms, and all three of them seemed like they’d had such a great night out that they could hardly form a coherent sentence.

It brought a smile to Kamilah’s face to see how Adrian relished in his role as an Uncle. It wasn’t that Jax and Zahra were replacing Charles by any means, but she could tell that they filled that void that had existed within him since the day he died.

When they’d first set foot in Manhattan together centuries earlier, Kamilah had hated the fact they had been sent to New York because it had been the most forlorn of places, the most abject. Nothing more than a newborn city down at Battery and a collection of homesteads in place of what was now some of the busiest areas of Manhattan. The brokenness had been everywhere, the disarray universal. One had only to open their eyes to see it. The broken people traumatised from the revolutionary war, the broken things, the broken thoughts. The whole city had been a junk heap— so she’d never have believed it back then if anybody had told her that this happiness could bloom here.

As she watched her brother and her children excitedly explaining the plot of the musical they’d seen, she gave her wife’s hand a tight squeeze and gave her a secret look worthy of a thousand words that nobody but the two of them could hear. This expensive New York apartment had once been so still... so lifeless. Now laughter bounced off the walls. The refrigerator was decorated with numerous artistic masterpieces made in a kindergarten classroom. Framed images of treasured memories decorated the bookshelves that had once held nothing but coffee table books and coveted business awards that hadn’t meant a thing to the woman they’d been awarded to.

Despite how content she felt, Kamilah didn’t say a thing. Our hearts always knew exactly what was in them, even if our mouths remained silent. And the world would know exactly what that was, even when one believed nothing remained in and of their heart — and she now knew, the universe had a funny way of working.

Nights like this, when music echoed through the penthouse muddled with high pitched laughter, were nothing less than a revelation about the workings of her own ancient heart, for music was the heart, she realised, the fullest expression of the beating heart, and now that she had heard what she had heard, she was beginning to hear better, and the better she heard, the more deeply she felt everything — sometimes so deeply that her entire body shook from the force of it.

Somehow... Someway... she’d gotten everything she’d ever wanted.

~~~~ five years earlier ~~~~

“Okay, so,” Anastasia said as she excitedly presented the family with some ground breaking new research passion project she’d concocted in the newly refurbished Raines Corp laboratories, “my week on bedrest gave me a lot of time to think about things.”

Kamilah snorted as she leaned against one of the countertops. It was incredible how silent it was in this laboratory compared to the madness they had just escaped winding through the maze of top secret high tech labs throughout the skyscraper. Mortals and vampires in white coats were practically climbing the walls with excitement and the passion they were pouring into their work. A first-rate system of laboratories like the ones here was one in which even mediocre scientists could produce outstanding work that would change the world.

Anastasia’s rule in the laboratories was as absolute as that of a Pharaoh, and she showed deference to no one. The ambition she had meant never being satisfied with her discoveries, always hungering for something more, constantly pushing forward because no success could ever be big enough to quell the need for new and even bigger successes.

“Wasn’t the point of you being on bedrest to rest?,” Serafine snorted whilst inspecting some complicated looking set up made out of test tubes, beakers, and a lot of different brightly coloured chemical liquids bubbling away on the other side of the large countertop they were all stood at.

“You try forcing her to stay in one place for a week without inevitably solving some sort of age old scientific mystery,” Kamilah huffed. “It’s damn near impossible.”

Damn near impossible had been putting it lightly. Anastasia had devoured close to fifty research papers on her seven days bedrest and had watched multiple lectures with renowned scientists and mathematicians on the internet. It just went to show that while all people were bound together by the common space they shared, their journeys through time were all different, which meant that each person lived in a slightly different world from everyone else. And in Anastasia’s world, filling her head with complex series of numbers and formulas was a guilty pleasure rather than a form of sadistic mental torture.

“Anyway,” Anastasia said, drawing their attention back to the projector that was projecting the screen of her iPad onto one of the clinical white walls. Nobody but Adrian had any idea what the complex equations meant — Kamilah had been pretending to follow her wife’s explanations for weeks now as a show of support... but it was all still a foreign language to her. “Adrian, I thought a lot about that serum of yours that you thought would allow us to walk in the sun... and I think I found a way to make it work.”

Adrian’s jaw dropped. “You saw what that did to me—“

“I know,” the Bloodkeeper interjected excitedly, “but what if it’s not an intravenous injection at all? What if I found a way that builds further on Nikola Tesla’s research into drawing natural energy from all around us to create a sort of... self sustaining shield that’s condensed all the way down into a piece of jewellery... that has no physical strain upon the wearer—“

“That’s— You— Is this theoretical or have you done it?,” he stammered as his eyes frantically scanned the odd looking graphs and tables. “You’ve— Anastasia...”

“Adrian,” Anastasia beamed.

“My god... wow. This might actually work,” he breathed. 

“You’ve only read the first page of my research—“

“I told you when I first introduced you to the serum that there was a missing link— something that I couldn’t figure out... this first page is all I need to see to know that you’re on the right track.” He ran a hand through his hair. “You’ve— Good god— You’ve actually done it!”

“Hold up,” Lily squeaked. “You mean to tell me my pasty ass is gonna be able to start tanning again?”

“Pasty?,” laughed Serafine. “You have the ideal amount of melanin.”

“Yeah, I know that, but you shoulda seen me as a mortal during the summer. Every goddamn day I was living my best life and having that hot girl summer moment.”

“It will take a few years to perfect,” Anastasia said sheepishly. “But the end goal is that our kind will be able to feel the sun on our skin without having to drink my blood to prevent crumbling to ash.” She absentmindedly ran a hand over her sweetly swollen belly. “I think it’ll be good for everybody, the children especially, to be able to integrate more fully into society.”

“So daylight rings from The Vampire Dairies,” Lily nodded. “That was legit all you had to say, Tony Stark. All these numbers and letters is giving me way too many middle school flashbacks of sitting at the dining room table with my dad yelling at me because my dumbass thought algebra was a kind of underwear—“

“Lily,” sighed Kamilah. “Reel it in.”

Everybody shared a laugh at that.

“So what are your next steps?,” Serafine prodded.

“Well, I’m going to isolate a more refined form of Adrian’s serum with a vial of my blood and infuse that into a conductive metal— I’m not sure which one will work yet so I’ll have to try them all. I’m going to experiment with; silver, copper, gold, platinum, aluminium, nickel, zinc, iron, mercury, and tungsten until I find the optimal results— but I’ll start with silver because there are so many urban legends surrounding the effects it has on vampires... they must’ve come from somewhere.” She paused. “The approach requires more persistence than imagination, I think, but it will produce remarkable results.”

“Why is it necessary that you bleed for this?,” Kamilah asked softly.

“My blood has properties that other vampires do not,” Anastasia explained as she glided towards two microscopes and beckoned them all over to her. “The slide on the right is a representation of a regular vampire’s blood that Tyler donated to me to research with. The slide on the left is my blood, which of course, is a mixture of Rheya and Demetrius’ blood combined with the regular vampiric properties that you’ll see in Tyler’s blood.”

Everybody took a look, but again, nobody but Adrian seemed to have any idea what they were looking at exactly. However, Kamilah mentally noted that there were far more blood cells on the slide containing Anastasia’s blood than there were on Tyler’s. They weren’t only bigger and differently shaped but they seemed to be pulsating with the ancient power wound deeply within their makeup. 

“We know I can cure sunburns and the bite of a feral,” Anastasia continued, “and that I can walk in the sun for hours before it burns me... and even when that happens I heal naturally from the damage in moments after finding shade to rest in. My blood is the key to finally understanding exactly why it is we can’t walk in the sun all day like we could when we were mortal, and once I find out why—“

“You can work backwards,” Adrian breathed.

“Exactly,” beamed Anastasia. “We know that the amount of melanin we have has little to do with the damage caused by the sun. Every race of vampire burns to the same degree, and in the same amount of time. Neither does the purity of our blood, those Turned closest to Rheya’s Turning burn just the same as those of us Turned in the last five years or so and thus have a more diluted form of blood in their veins.”

Adrian was practically salivating with excitement. “What are your theories?,” he prodded.

“Even though I’ve just started, I do have several.” Anastasia leaned against the counter. Kamilah could tell right away that her back was hurting. “The first is that it’s the DNA from Demetrius’ blood that offers me a unique protection against UV rays, as we know Ferals merely are repelled by sunlight and don’t actually seem to turn to ash. The second is that everything I’m thinking is wrong and that taking blood sample directly from a Feral might be the missing link and my blood has very little to do with things— but considering it’s my blood that can heal sun damage, I don’t think that one is very likely, but I’m still going to need a Feral blood sample to compare against my blood and the blood of other vampires. And the third— well, it’s pseudoscience, really—“

“Tell us,” Kamilah said gently as she began rubbing the knots out of her shoulders for her.

“The third is that Rheya actually is directly to blame for thousands of years of our kind existing in the dark,” Anastasia said quietly. “There are memories of hers from the time she Turned Gaius and Xenocrates that have been troubling me. She... drank something that temporarily weakened her right before feeding them her blood.”

“Sis roofied herself?,” Lily huffed. “That’s some big dick energy right there.”

Anastasia shrugged. “Something like that... but for some reason I can’t seem to figure out exactly what it was. A mortal alchemist hands her a glass vial and she drinks it, but I can’t see what it was because no vampire was in the room whilst it was being made. All I see is her gagging and growing paler, almost like she was immediately rendered anaemic or something, and then I see her feeding them her blood.” She paused. “So my theory is that whatever this tonic was, we’re still seeing the side affects of it laced into what she called her ‘borrowed blood’ all these years later. That the fact we can’t enjoy the sun isn’t a natural thing, but something she induced to ensure she was always that little bit more powerful than everybody else— I don’t know, I’ll have to write an essay on it to sort out my thoughts.”

“An essay?,” Serafine echoed.

Anastasia nodded. “I do it a lot. So right now that is the idea I am toying with: to write an essay about the things that nobody but me knows ever happened, the lives once lived and the lives not lived, the wars not fought, the shadow worlds that run parallel to the world we take to be the real world, the not-said and the not-done, the not-remembered.” She paused. “To see my thoughts on paper helps me solve these mysteries. To understand what isn’t mine to understand... to help.”

The room fell silent and Kamilah’s hands briefly paused on the nape of her wife’s neck at the sheer casualness in her voice after everything she’d just shared. Anastasia never seemed to give herself any credit for being exceptional, as she was so smart that this sort of stuff seemed simple to her. Here was the woman who had solved the vampire fertility issue, brought their society into a new age of enlightenment, and ran a multi-billion dollar company that had made numerous technological leaps forward since she’d taken over from Adrian... yet she didn’t see it the way everybody else did. She just seemed to understand how things worked better than most people and could explain almost anything in the most baffling scientific language that often left everybody in her vicinity needing a drink.

Kamilah, herself, had been an intelligent pessimist since her childhood in Egypt — but now she was a pessimist who had occasional flashes of optimism. Nearly everything happened for the worst in life, but not always, nothing was ever always, but she was always expecting the worst, and when the worst did not happen, she would get so excited she would begin to sound like an optimist. However, she was her wife’s biggest fan regardless of the fact she simply didn’t have the mathematical and scientific brain that she did, and where her work was concerned she was a rampant optimist in every regard.

Just watching her in this environment and hearing how she spoke of her work... it was a dazzling thing. It reminded her of something Anastasia had said to her once over their morning coffee; she’d learned how to look at herself from a distance, to see herself first of all as a scientist among other scientists at work and not the infamous Bloodkeeper, then as a collection of random particles of matter, and finally as a single speck of dust — and the farther she traveled from her point of origin, she had told her, the closer she came to achieving greatness.

If there was anybody who could solve this riddle, it was her Annie. She felt it all the way to her bones.

“But regardless,” Anastasia said quickly, “it’ll take me at least a few years to truly figure it out. There’s a lot of research to be done... both psychically and scientifically — and I don’t have the mental energy to do the psychic gymnastics necessary whilst pregnant.”

Kamilah kissed her hair. “Take as long as you need, my love. It’s not as if we’re short on time.”

Everybody laughed and congratulated her whilst Kamilah continued to knead her muscles over her white lab coat.

“And what’s this?,” Adrian asked whilst looking through the files containing research on Anastasia’s tablet. 

“What’s what?,” Anastasia prodded.

“The file named: SpaceX You’re Going Down Bitch,” he laughed.

“Elon Musk is chauvinistic idiot and I think Raines Corp can do space better than him,” Anastasia shrugged, talking about starting her own space exploration project the very same way she discussed he weather with the Starbucks barista on the way to work. 

“Do space?,” echoed Lily as she affectionately nudged Anastasia’s arm. “What a fucking nerd.”

“It’s still in the early stages of research, of course, but right now I think I have a way to cut the price of a reusable rocket launch in half— and a design for a new capsule to bring astronauts back from the ISS in half the time, also for half the money.”

“Space... she’s really talking about space,” Serafine laughed in disbelief. “Why am I ever surprised?”

Anastasia shrugged sheepishly, her cheeks flushing the slightest bit. “Well the way this world is going, one day we’re all going to have to relocate to Mars or some distant planet with a climate we’ve yet to destroy. You’ll all be thankful when I find a way to get us there— and we can even walk in the sun while we’re there.”

All anybody could do was giggle in agreement, as they all knew that when Anastasia said she was going to do something, she damn well did it. Space exploration. Walking in the sun. At this point in their marriage Kamilah wasn’t even surprised when she declared some brand new passion project, as aside from the fertility research she’d also delivered on; electronic cars with an autopilot system as safe as the ones on jets, solar powered cellphones, heart rate monitors for patients with cardiac issues that were as discrete as the nicotine patches smokers wore and solar powered prosthetic limbs for amputees with a sense of touch — both of which she provided for free to those in need of them, pioneering research into a new breed of surgical robots, and an odd looking hovering skateboard she’d created on a dare from Lily after watching Back To The Future that was powered by water and sold out every holiday season around the globe.

“If our children are even half as brainy as you, I am going to require private tutoring to keep up with the discussions held across the dinner table,” she chuckled as she accompanied Anastasia back to her office. There was twenty-five minutes to spare before her next meeting and she intended to spend those moments with her wife.

Anastasia giggled softly and gave her hand a tight squeeze. “I’m sure that could be arranged.”

“I just don’t know how you do it,” she gushed. “You just— You understand things that most people cannot even begin to comprehend! It’s maddening.”

“I had good mentors, that’s all,” Anastasia said, blushing. “And there was a lot of trial and error— did I ever tell you about the time when I tried to build a rocket in my parent’s basement? I was nine, I think, and got the idea from watching Jimmy Neutron.”

She snorted. “You did not... but I’m hardly even surprised at all.”

Anastasia nodded. “I almost killed myself and came close to blowing up their house— oh and when that didn’t pan out, then I had the idea of building a jet engine to attach to my bike—“

“A jet engine?,” she laughed.

“Like, a mini one, but yeah. A jet engine.” Anastasia nodded enthusiastically. “The Kazakh-British Technical University had a ton of old banned soviet books and because I was the local nerd who won all of the science fairs at primary school and went to the summer programs for gifted students all the professors liked me and let me hang out there after school and attend some of their lectures. It was actually really easy to figure it out and everything was great until the cops showed up and tried to confiscate my bike.”

She chuckled. “What happened?”

“Their car broke down in my parents driveway and they couldn’t figure out how to fix it. So I did the thing all smart ten year old Kazakh girls do and bribed them.” She smirked at her as she flopped down on her couch. “I had that thing fixed in three minutes and got to keep my bike, I even built one for the cop’s son— so, yeah, that’s a thing I did.”

She couldn’t help but dissolve into laughter at that. 

Yes, it was possible, she realised, that some people simply did not ever grow up, that even as the years passed them by, they remained the children they always were. They remembered themselves as they were then, and they felt themselves to be the same. They made themselves into what they were at the present moment, and they remained what they once were, in spite of the years and the wisdom that came with them. They did not change for themselves. Time made them grow old in a body that would be forever young, but they did not change. Not really.

“Thank god our children are immortal... that’s all I can say. I will have a heart attack if I ever hear talk of attaching jet engines to things.”

Anastasia smiled contently and stroked a hand over her belly. Now she felt better than she had been feeling at the beginning. She wasn’t 100%, but because she had been feeling so bad it felt like she felt great. She loved her swelling tummy, loved how everyone gave way before her, paid her tribute, wanted to touch her arm or shoulder. In the mirror, her face glowed. Her days of constant nausea were forgotten. The second trimester of the pregnancy was easy, it was a breeze on a summer’s night — even though she quickly tired and never seemed to have much energy.

“God, I just pictured one being a mad scientist like me and the other running around throwing daggers at people’s eyes.”

She bent down and pressed a few kisses on her stomach, her heart fluttering at the little movements she felt against her cheek. “What a glorious thing that would be.” She kept her hand on her lower stomach as she sat up and kissed Anastasia on the cheek. “What you don't think about when you're planning for children is when or how you're going to teach them how not to be killed. The idea that at least one of them would be capable of building a rocket launcher and the other capable of beheading a man with a kitchen knife brings me a great deal of comfort.”

“Until they start arguing and we have homemade bombs going off in the living room and somebody running around with one of your medieval swords trying to behead their sibling,” smirked Anastasia.

“That would certainly be an unfortunate set of circumstances,” she snorted.

Anastasia nodded as she yawned. “It’s not even half way through the work day and I’m already beat.”

Kamilah drew her into her arms. “Adrian said he could step back in whenever you asked to allow you to take maternity leave sooner.”

“I know but I don’t wanna leave until I have to,” Anastasia shrugged. “I’d be climbing the walls within a week and my research can’t all be done without a lab.”

“Can you go home to rest today? What does the rest of your afternoon look like? I know we have a commitment this evening but... you could go home for a few hours.”

“I’m doing that Forbes Magazine interview in... an hour, I think... for my cover next month,” she nuzzled her cheek against her shoulder. “Then I have a meeting with every department head, a board meeting, a Zoom Q&A session with students at Belvoire, and then I’m meeting with— I have no idea who I’m meeting with. Who the hell am I meeting with?”

“Pregnancy brain,” Kamilah chuckled. “You’re meeting with me.”

“About what?,” Anastasia murmured, her brow furrowing.

“The nursery?,” she laughed. “You, me, the interior designer who did the rest of the penthouse and came to view the room last Tuesday—“

“That’s today?,” Anastasia laughed.

She nodded. “That’s today.”

“Shit.”

“The car is picking me up at 4:45. I’ll get you at 5– our appointment isn’t until six but we both know it’ll take that long with the traffic and— you know what, I’ll text you.”

Anastasia pouted. “I think I can remember to be downstairs by five.”

She raised a brow but held her tongue. Despite that big brain, the forgetfulness of pregnancy hadn’t spared Anastasia. That very morning Kamilah had found her cellphone in the fridge and two days before she’d been stood up for lunch because a certain someone had forgotten all about their restaurant reservation. Then there was the time she’d caught her almost washing her hair with body wash that looked very similar to her shampoo. And the time she’d nearly brushed her teeth with a tube of moisturiser in place of her toothpaste. She’d text her regardless of whether Anastasia thought she needed a reminder or not, but she’d ensure there was plenty of snacks and blood in car to brighten her mood should the hormones make themselves known at the so-called coddling.

She kissed the top of her head and gave her a tight squeeze. Anastasia loved that Kamilah was especially good at calming the hormonal meltdowns she had frequently, and she thanked her for it every day. The ancient vampire would not allow her to think of them as weaknesses to be tolerated and did not rant or scold, and if she worried, it was only because she wanted her to be well. As Kamilah held her, Anastasia counted the reasons why she had held her close to her for so many years, and surely this was one of them, one of the bright stars in the vast constellation of enduring love.


	8. you’ll be alright, no one can hurt you now.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by; Safe & Sound by Julia Sheer.

“Look at them,” Anastasia murmured, leaning into Kamilah’s embrace as they watched their children running up ahead of them throughout the vast open space of Central Park. They were playing a ball game that looked very similar to one she and Lysimachus had played once, only two thousand odd years ago it hadn’t been called Catch — Kamilah had taken it as a personal challenge to hit poor Lysi in the face with their leather ball as a child, so much so that she’d been banned from playing.

Thank god her own children weren’t as fucked up as she had once been.

She let out a low hum as she watched them throwing their ball back and forth, their light up sneakers sparking in the darkness. In the decades they’d been together, she and Anastasia had been right at this spot hundreds of times, but she often remembered the last time they’d been here by the pond the precious month before the babies had been born and how it had felt like a last first date. There'd been a different kind of romance beginning on that evening five years earlier. As they both knew they would never again be entirely alone in the world.

“They certainly are enjoying themselves, aren’t they?,” she sighed happily as she watched Jax doing a cartwheel as Zahra chased after the runaway ball.

So many times she and Anastasia had sat here in the dead of night after clearing the park of Ferals whilst all the mortals were sleeping. It was here that little by little, as Kamilah had came to know her better in the weeks that followed their first meeting, she discovered that they saw eye to eye on nearly everything of any importance. Their politics were the same, most of the books they cared about were the same books, and they had actually very similar attitudes about what they each wanted out of life: love, work, and family — with money and possessions far down on the list... and that had surprised her a great deal when her wife had been a twenty-two year old mortal.

Much to her relief, though, she had discovered that their personalities were nothing alike whilst sitting right here. Anastasia laughed much more than Kamilah had back then, and before life had handed her so much responsibility she had been freer and more outgoing than the world now allowed her to be, and she was much warmer than Kamilah was, and yet, all the way down at the bottom of her ancient heart, she had felt that she had met another version of herself — but one that was more fully evolved than she was, better able to express what she kept bottled up inside her, a saner being after only twenty-two years of life. 

It was right here that she had admitted to herself that she adored her, and for the first time in her long life, the person she adored adored her right back. They came from entirely different worlds, a young Kazakhstani girl from Almaty who was as damn close to an angelic innocence as Kamilah had ever seen and a not so young ancient Egyptian princess with a body count that shamed every mortal serial killer combined, but just sixteen months after their chance encounter on September twenty-third almost forty-four years earlier, they decided to move in together. Until then, every decision Kamilah had made about women had been a wrong decision — but not this one, she had reached sitting in this very same spot as they now watched their children at play. This had been the best one of her whole life.

Anastasia nodded and when she spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper, “I still hope that one day they’ll be able to do this in the sun.”

“You mustn’t be too hard on yourself for not achieving the results you wished for right away. You’ve made such gargantuan leaps forward in your research all whilst launching the space division of Raines Corp less than five years after you first informed us of your crazy idea— not to mention the countless other technologies you’ve introduced and are currently working on.” She tucked a long strand of ginger hair behind her ear for her as it caught in the gentle breeze. “You’ve done so much and are juggling so many balls that nobody can understand how you’re doing it.”

“It’s not nearly as difficult as everybody likes to think.” Anastasia shrugged. “It’s like— like I just look at things and somehow understand what they can evolve into next and I just... know how to go about it.” She paused. “Like when you look at a written word and understand what it says and what it means, and probably can’t remember a time when you didn’t understand it. That’s how I normally feel when I’m at work... which is why these damn daylight rings I’m trying to make are so frustrating. I’m not used to feeling dumb.”

“I know that you may feel that way,” she said in the gentlest voice she could, “but that does not mean it’s true. Our kids — and many other kids — are only alive today because of how smart you are. Thousands of mortals lives have been saved because of the medical technology you’ve created. The environment has been improved because you decided to change the game when it came to everything... and now every other tech company is floundering trying to catch up to you.” She kissed her temple. “As long as I'm holding you, all of my dreams have already come true and I need no sunlight in order to be fulfilled or happy. That big brain of yours is a wonderful thing... but it must stop tormenting itself—“

“Wait,” Anastasia interjected, her jaw practically hitting the floor as her eyes widened by degrees. “Tormenting itself...”

“What?”

Anastasia simply stared at her in silence and she could see the wheels in her head turning. It was a look that said: if this not knowing was hell, and if hell was a memory, then she realised that perhaps there was some purpose to her being at a loss. Cut off from everything that was familiar to her and everything she thought she knew, unable to discover even a single point of reference, she saw that her steps, by taking her where she believed to be nowhere, were taking her nowhere but into herself. She was wandering inside herself, and she was lost. Far from troubling her, now this state of being lost seemed to be becoming a source of happiness, of exhilaration. She breathed it into her very bones. As if on the brink of some previously hidden knowledge, she breathed it into her very soul and said to herself, wordlessly, almost triumphantly: I am lost.

“Tormenting itself,” Anastasia repeated after a long moment. “Don’t you see? It— holy shit— it— no... could it really be so simple? Kami! You goddamn genius!”

Her brow furrowed. “Uh... thank you?”

“Adrenaline!,” Anastasia said with so much excitement she was practically shaking. “The main problem in my trials is that once mixed with the new daylight serum and the conductive metal, the powers bound to my blood sample seem to weaken enough that they’re ineffective for any significant period of time. But what happens when I get really mad?”

“You lose control of your abilities...”

“My body floods with adrenaline and my powers amplify to the point I can literally cause earth quakes and influence the ocean tides more powerfully than the moon can!,” she gushed. “I’m going to need to make myself really mad and then if you could help me take more blood samples to experiment with— tormenting myself is the answer. It’s been right in front of me this whole time...”

She snorted. “You are something else, you know that?”

“You’re the one who gave me the idea!,” Anastasia laughed. “I— but how do I go about making myself mad...”

“I could arrange a Zoom call with Aiko,” she suggested as a joke, but the moment a smile spread across Anastasia’s face she realised that she’d given her the answer she needed. She couldn’t help but puff up with pride at that.

Science.

She was doing science.

Perhaps she understood now what her father had once told her on the banks of The Nile as they’d watched the boats sailing from Upper Egypt to Lower Egypt: that once you threw your life to the winds, you would discover things you had never known before, things that could not be learned under any other circumstance. That only those who actually rowed the boat made waves.

Anastasia took her face in her hands and drew her into a kiss. “Kamilah Sayeed, you are brilliant!”

She huffed in amusement. “Naturally—“

She was cut off by the unmistakable sound of a Feral’s heartbeat and both she and Anastasia sprung to their feat.

“That’s our ball, you dumbass zombie!,” Jax shrieked as he used his psychic abilities to snatch their ball back from the creature before its claws could pop the fragile rubber.

“Zahra!,” Kamilah yelled as their daughter began charging towards the undead monster with a branch held between her left fist as a makeshift stake.

“Watch me!,” their fearless little warrior laughed gleefully, launching herself faster towards the thing.

“I’ll get Jax,” Anastasia said as more tumbled out of the trees. “You make sure she’s okay.”

They each took off running towards their children and all Kamilah could do was watch in awe as their daughter swiftly staked a creature more than twice her size in the chest. It definitely was impressive for one’s first Feral battle.

“You’re not going to kill me,” Zahra laughed, and with swift impatience, she jabbed her makeshift in one of their guts before running back to Kamilah’s side as she disembowelled another. “How was that, Mama?”

“Wonderful,” she chuckled, drawing her behind her and handing her the spare set of daggers holstered in her blazer. “Do you recall what I taught you about fighting back to back?”

“You protect me, I protect you, and we kick these bitches in the ass!”

“Indeed— but please don’t say bitch... or ass,” she sighed.

“Jax said dumbass,” Zahra said as she jumped up and gouged out the eyeballs of a slobbering Feral before hacking off its head with one swift stroke in the same manner Kamilah had performed Gaius’ execution.

“And I’m sure mommy is lecturing him about it as we speak,” she said as she beheaded another Feral and cast a glance to where Anastasia and Jax were back to back using their abilities to send creatures flying into jagged tree branches. “Bitch is an inappropriate word for a five year old.”

“But Mama, I’m a zombie killing five year old,” Zahra groaned, kicking a downed Feral in the groin before plunging the daggers into its chest. “Pretty please can I say it like Auntie Lily?”

“It is impolite.” She sighed. “Now focus. Do not lose form.”

The whole time she made sure to be mentally taking notes on what their daughter was doing, but found herself surprised by just how well she was remembering all of her training after being thrown straight in at the deep end. This was how she’d felt fighting at Anastasia’s side for the first time, surprised at the strength of the fragile. She supposed for some people, it was ordinary life that was most challenging, not so much the extraordinary feats they performed.

In a way, Zahra’s greatest strength was that she would be so overlooked and underestimated by potential enemies until she grew. Within seconds people decided who she was, and what she was and wasn't capable of. But no one was so easy to sum up, least of all a someone like Zahra, who yearned to be a warrior with every fibre of her immortal being.

The ground shook and the water in the pond began to slosh back and forth, and Kamilah looked over to see Anastasia practically radiating with power, and each one of the still surviving Ferals started to crumble to ash one by one. It was like something snapped in her mind as she watched Annie take on that infamous form. The noise all around her receded in a wave until all she heard was her distant, throbbing pulse like a muffled heartbeat. Her powers gutted one of the Ferals not three strides in front of Jax, and the creature twisted in a horrid dance as its guts spilled. 

Zahra dropped her weapons as she stared at Anastasia in awe and one of them landed at Kamilah’s feet. She picked it up and handed it back to her. Through the red mist that drifted down before her eyes, she no longer saw a park, or Ferals. She could see only The Bloodkeeper almost at her full capacity of power. Their son and daughter, hacking and slashing and killing the beasts as they crumbled, and cheering for their mother. In that moment, she saw why Anastasia was the be all and end all of their society, and she was miraculous.

“Both of you stay here,” she said to the twins as the last Feral fell.

“Mommy really is like Aang!,” Jax giggled. “Auntie Lily was right!”

“Indeed,” Kamilah nodded, kissing each of them on the cheek. “You both did a wonderful job. You can rest now.”

“Mommy’s still glowing,” Zahra said.

“Because she needs my help grounding herself,” she said as plainly as she could. “Just— stay here for a moment. Do not move or try to get mommy’s attention until I tell you to, do I make myself abundantly clear?”

Both children nodded enthusiastically.

Nobody else would dare get close to Anastasia whilst she was awash with so much power the very Earth upon which she stood shook beneath her feet. Nobody else would survive it... that much power could scorch an attacking mortal alive so that even the dust from their bones was obliterated and it had been a tactical move to ensure that nobody but Kamilah knew that one had to keep her calm as they approached her in this state to avoid startling her into losing control.

As she walked towards her, she spoke sweet nothings to draw her attention through through the power induced haze. It was very similar to what she’d done on the night she’d defeated Rheya, only now it was a tried and true practice, an act of blind faith that the connection between them was stronger than this ancient power bloodbound to Anastasia.

As she spoke to her, she was highly aware that some impulses were harder to ignore than others. Anastasia had told her before that when she dissolved into this condition it felt like every ounce of energy she had needed to be turned to trying to restrain the power from consuming everything for miles around her. Too much anxiety. Too much stress. Too much anger. They could all trigger a spiral, as her powerful mind could imagine terrors far more horrific than anybody else could ever physically bear, just like her mind would tune out those physical hurts when the pain and fear surpassed what her body could endure... leading to these episodes when she made the choice to become a weapon instead of a target.

She was aware that the fear of consequences caused Anastasia to guard her secrets from everybody but her, and it was why she’d already begun to teach their children to guard their thoughts. But it was her actions when faced with temptation that defined who she was. It was her courage in admitting what she’d done wrong when she made a mistake that made it forgivable.

“Shhhhh,” Kamilah soothed as she got close enough to finally wrap her arms around her. “I’ve got you. I’m here. Everybody is safe. You don’t have to protect us anymore. Rest now, my love. All is well.”

Anastasia convulsed in her arms and fell limp, the intense power dissipating and leaving the cool early Spring air around them feeling unseasonably warm and staticky. Beneath her clammy white skin, there was fear. Pain. Remorse. Yearning. Desire. A fierce longing and a wise respect for her own power. All of this. She was joined to every living thing. It was as if she lived in the centre of a great storm. Around her the world revolved like a giant kaleidoscope, where images refracted again and again throughout time. So many memories. So much power and potential. So much to know.

“Thank you,” Anastasia whispered, her voice hoarse as she clutched at her aching head.

“Thank you,” Kamilah said softly, guiding her face into the crook of her neck. “We wouldn’t have gotten out of that without someone being bitten if you hadn’t intervened like that. There were simply too many.”

“Where did they come from, do you think?”

“I’m not sure,” she admitted, gesturing to the children to come to them. “We’ll figure it out later.”

“Mommy that was awesome!,” Zahra gushed excitedly. “Did you see me whooping crusty Feral ass?”

Kamilah heaved a sigh. 

This language was all Lily Spencer’s doing. 

Unbelievable. 

Un-bloody-believable.

“You did an incredible job,” Anastasia smiled, caressing their daughter’s cheek as she leaned in to kiss her forehead. “You fought just like mama.”

Zahra seemed to stand taller at the compliment and Kamilah let out a soft laugh.

“Can you teach me to glow like that and make earthquakes?,” Jax asked.

Anastasia laughed and drew all three of them into a hug, her weakened limbs trembling as she tried to move. “I’d prefer to never see you like that, honey. It may look cool but I don’t feel so great now.”

“What... was it?,” their son asked slowly. “Why the white bits of your eyes go red and how did so many crusty ass Ferals get popped at once.”

Crusty ass Ferals.

Popped.

Lily Spencer was in for a stern talking to about the language she used around the children.

Anastasia sighed. “I will never be able to discuss what I did because I... I don’t really understand it myself. All I know is it’s a cycle: I change the world, the world changes me.”

“Why do you not understand it?,” Zahra asked innocently.

“I’m not sure. All I know is I can’t do it on command or anything like it without something terrible happening.” She lay down on the chilly grass to catch her breath and all three of them lay at her side, their eyes focused on the clear night sky above them. “I can’t promise I won’t have bad days where you might see it happening again. I can’t assure you I won’t need space or time if emotions get too strong to bear... because I never want either of you near me when that happens.”

“But we could help like mama did,” Jax said sweetly.

“You can help by staying safe and protecting each other,” Kamilah said. She lay there on the grass beside the swollen pond, her dark eyes closed as the damp wind bit her face. There were few sounds she enjoyed more than the groans of dying men or the screams of her enemies, but the wind and the sounds of her family’s beating hearts were some of them.

Anastasia nodded in agreement. “But one thing I will promise, is that I will never love anyone as much as I love the three of you. I’ll always protect you at any cost.”

~~~~ five years earlier ~~~~

“Damn girl,” Lily said to a very hormonal Anastasia as Kamilah ushered her into Lily’s home at The Shadow Den with a protective hand in the small of her back. They were both exhausted but the fact Anastasia was very eager for a family pizza night after attending a doctor’s appointment and then a birthing class together brought a smile to Kamilah’s face. “You look like you wanna cut a bitch.”

Without a word Kamilah picked up a pink converse sneaker with song lyrics written on it in Sharpie ink that Lily had carelessly left by the door to her quarters and lobbed it at her head. Evidently the imbecile still couldn’t tell when and when not to tease a pregnant lady — but Kamilah knew that when she was hangry one simply did not mess with her. Ever. Unless they had a death wish.

“Dude, chill. Imma compliment your new daggers in a minute.” The fool squinted at Anastasia. “You’re almost, like, six hundred months pregnant at this point, I feel. Shouldn’t you be soft, and happy, and glowing? When are we gonna see some glow?”

Lily Spencer clearly had a death wish.

“My love, look, pizza—“

Kamilah was cut off by Anastasia. “My stomach is the size of a house, the two babies inside me keep kicking me in the kidneys, I have to pee every five minutes, my legs cramp, and I can’t get out of bed by myself. I have to roll to the side like a walrus and have Kami steady me— and we’ve just watched a woman squeezing a ping pong ball out of a balloon as a visual on what’s going to happen to my vagina in just a few months time.” She sat down on the couch with a sigh. “And how was your day of being drunk, beautiful, skinny, and carefree? Why aren’t you glowing?”

“What the fuck are you talking about? I’m glowing! Look at how glowy I am—“

“That’s sweat,” Adrian pointed out. “It tends to happen when one overdoses on caffeine.”

Kamilah sighed. “Dare I ask how many energy drinks you’ve consumed since the last time I told you to lay off those things?”

“I’ve drank thirty Monster energies in the past twenty-four hours and I feel great!,” Lily beamed as she reached out to gently touch Anastasia’s belly. “And— wait, what the fuck does a balloon and a ping pong ball have to do with squeezing kids outta your pussy—“

“Lily,” Serafine hissed. 

“Right... hormones—“

“I’m not hormonal!,” Anastasia snapped. The very fact she was snapping at all told everybody that she was indeed very hormonal.

Lily turned back to her stomach and got very close. Initially Kamilah thought she meant to rub it again and prepared to intervene because she just knew Anastasia was not in the mood for it right now. Instead Lily addressed the babies.

"Nameless kids who I am still hoping will be named Liliano and Liliana," she said, deepening her voice in a really wretched imitation of Darth Vader. "I am your Auntie."

Anastasia groaned and everybody else struggled to control their laughter. Lily was such a fool. A terrible, wonderful, idiotic, vampire fool... and that was exactly why they loved her.

“Annie, do you want your blood in a glass or over the pizza?,” Kamilah asked.

“A glass, please,” Anastasia murmured as Serafine fawned over the pictures of the ultrasound scans saved onto her phone. “I can get it—“

“Just relax,” Kamilah soothed as she tore into a bag of B-Positive to pour it into a glass. “I’ve got you.”

“How was the doctor and the class?,” Adrian whispered as he sidled up beside her to help her grab some food for Anastasia. “Are the babies well?”

“The babies are perfect but the doctor has advised Annie start maternity leave earlier than she’d hoped, so she’ll be talking to you about stepping back into Raines Corp at some point this evening. Her blood pressure is still unstable enough that she may have to be on bed rest again—“

“That explains the mood. I remember them well from when Eleanor was pregnant... she once cried for an hour when she wanted a fire lit but the fire was somehow too warm when it was lit... yet she didn’t want me to put it out or open a window.” He chuckled softly. “I’m still trying to figure that one out.”

She affectionately patted his arm. “She actually took the news rather well, as she’s getting dizzy enough that we’re both uncomfortable with her ever being left alone whilst she’s standing up— she would’ve fallen onto the corner of the dining room table this morning if I hadn’t caught her when the dizziness struck.” She heaved a sigh as she took a piece of cheesy garlic bread and put it on Anastasia’s plate. “It was the birthing class that soured her mood. Being around so many pregnant women was incredibly overwhelming on a psychic level... everybody has so many strong emotions, you understand, so she was picking up on everything. I wanted to take her home to bed but she wanted to see everybody.”

Adrian nodded. “And how did you find the class?”

“You’re well aware it irritates me when mortals try to tell me what to do... so it took a lot of humbling myself to even walk through the door. However, it was very informative until they started to recommend books and they recommended the worst ones we’ve already devoured.” She stuffed a garlic knot into her mouth. “Why should every pregnant woman be expected to read the same book, anyway? Being pregnant isn't actually that complicated. What to Expect When You're Expecting shouldn't be a book. It should be a Post-it: Take your vitamins. Don't drink vodka. Get used to empire waistlines.”

She fell silent for a moment and realised that the instructor had informed everybody that they needed to surf some of the pregnancy websites they’d found when she first realised Anastasia was pregnant and the fertility treatments had worked. Apparently there was lots of good information available on the sites. But had they meant the slideshow labeled ‘Poppy seed to pumpkin: how big is your baby?’ Imagining their unborn children as an ear of corn was odd enough. But would she ever get used to the thought that by the end of this pregnancy, her wife would be carrying around two babies each the size of a small pumpkin?

Adrian snorted. “We were taking bets on whether or not you’d threaten to stab anybody.”

“I was forced to leave four of my daggers in the car—“

“Kamilah,” he laughed, “how many are you carrying now?”

She sighed. “Ten, if you must know.”

“The last time I checked you were carrying six— where do you even keep them? Why—“

“I like to be prepared for everything!,” she interjected. “The class had ten other couples. I thought it would be prudent to have a weapon to use on each of them, should they threaten my family—“

“You thought that a group of heavily pregnant mortals would be a threat to your family?”

“My wife is tiny and using her abilities has been a strain as of late. A heavily pregnant mortal body slamming her could cause serious harm to both her and my unborn children—“

“Why would a heavily pregnant mortal be body slamming anybody?,” Adrian snorted.

“You— It— I didn’t actually spiral far enough as to concoct a concrete reason as to why a pregnant mortal would be body slamming my beloved. I just knew I ought to be prepared for the possibility that it may occur.”

He handed her the plate that they’d worked hard to pile high with both plain cheese pizza and veggie pizza, and cheesy garlic bread and he cast her a look that made it clear he thought she was losing her mind. 

“She’s in a very delicate condition—“

“Go feed your wife,” he laughed, clapping her on the shoulder. “If I sit down on the couch to enjoy my pizza I promise not to body slam her. There will be no need to stab me.”

“Oh, fuck you,” she huffed, walking away with both of their dinners and a wine glass full of blood as Adrian doubled over laughing.

Perhaps she was being overly vigilant regarding Anastasia’s safety... but she was carrying their unborn children. Literally, her entire world existed within this wonderful woman. So she didn’t give a damn if anybody thought her crazy for thinking of and being prepared for things that most people probably didn’t give a single thought to.

“I’m sorry for being so moody earlier,” Anastasia murmured as she sat down beside her, smiling gratefully for the food. 

“It’s alright,” she assured her.

“It’s not,” Anastasia whispered, her eyes flaring crimson as she took a sip of her blood. “I hate that I’m so... touchy. You know that’s not— that I’m not intentionally just being bitchy—“

“Of course I know it, my love.” She rested a hand on her belly. “You’re creating two new lives... it’s hard work and you’re obviously going to have your moments. You know I’m not holding any of them against you, don’t you?”

Anastasia nodded. “I know you’re not... and thank you for that.”

“You have given me something I didn't even know I needed. It's the greatest gift I will ever receive. It is already completing me in places I wasn't aware were empty. And yet... in spite of all that? I don't love you any differently than I always have. You are as important and dear to me as you've always been." She curled down and pressed a kiss to the loose shirt she was wearing — it was one of hers, actually, and wasn't that great. "I was wholly bonded to you before this, and will be after this — and forevermore."

"You're going to make me cry again."

"So cry. And let me take care of you. I’ve got you.” She kissed her belly again, “Just think. All the love that we have for each other, we put it in this safe place here.” She sat up and pressed a kiss to her brow. “Everything is going to be okay, okay?”

Anastasia nodded and dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “Okay,” she whispered.

“Who ever would’ve though our dear Kamilah was capable of such tender emotions?,” Serafine teased. She was awfully smug for someone who was sobbing harder than the pregnant woman in the room. Far too smug for Kamilah’s liking.

The ancient vampire glared at her in a way that would’ve sent anybody else running for their lives and then everybody started laughing. Even Anastasia seemed highly amused... and that brought a smile to Kamilah’s face.

“Why don’t you tell everybody why you’re carrying ten daggers, Kamilah?,” Adrian teased, for no other purpose but to add to her torment in the way little brothers seemed to think was their god given purpose in life.

“I wanted options considering I was gracing you all with my presence this evening,” she shrugged and took a bite of her pepperoni pizza, “as I knew it would only be a matter of time before somebody pissed me off.”

“Ten?,” Serafine echoed, practically choking on the slice of hawaiian pizza in her mouth.

“I’m also carrying the same drug concoction the mortals — for some ridiculous reason unbeknown to me that does nothing but waste their tax dollars — use to execute their death row prisoners rather than just taking them outback and beheading them like a sane individual.” She sighed wistfully. “I miss walking down the street and happening upon a guillotine.”

“Wasn’t it wonderful?,” Serafine cooed. “Oh how I loved watching public executions on a chilly Parisian evening. I’d make a grand occasion of it each time some foolish mortal was set to be beheaded— life just has not been the same since somebody decided beheading rapists and the like was somehow unjust.”

“Y’all are really fucking scary sometimes, you know that?,” Lily laughed. “How the fuck can you be totally chill with watching some dude having his head cut off and lecture me for playing too much Call Of Duty and Grand Theft Auto? This shit ain’t adding up.”

“They lecture you because you drink thirty Monster energies so you can stay up and game until you start hallucinating,” Anastasia mumbled around a mouthful of garlic bread.

Lily snorted. “I played The Simpsons Hit And Run today for the first time since I was a kid whilst blasting every album the Backstreet Boys ever released. It was totally worth the Monster crash I’m gonna get.”

“I loved that game on my PS2,” Anastasia laughed. “That and the Eye-Toy games.”

“Eye-Toy was my jam back in the days before Wii sports!,” Lily said excitedly. 

“There was nothing like playing those games on a rainy Saturday afternoon whilst your parents were screaming about getting a divorce in the next room,” beamed Anastasia.

“Well fuck me sideways!,” Lily concluded, clapping both hands against her knees. “Girl. The nostalgia.”

“How was your parents yelling about getting a divorce a good thing?,” Adrian puzzled.

“You haven’t lived till you’ve intentionally thrown a Wii remote through a TV screen to get your folks to stop cussing at each other,” Lily shrugged. “That way they’d scream at you instead and stop hating on each other.”

“I’m starting to realise this might be the reason we both start crying the second anybody seriously yells at us,” Anastasia murmured. 

Lily nodded. “Damn. I think you might be right.”

Kamilah studied her wife in silence. There were a lot of reasons Anastasia was traumatised from her childhood, and she knew that being yelled at over a video game system was probably the very least of the mistreatments her wife had faced. The fact that both of her parents had resorted to alcohol to deal with her mother’s Bloodkeeper visions had done absolutely nothing for her apart from make her self sufficient to the point that asking for help for anything made her anxious, and given her a paralysing fear of drunk people because she’d wound up on the receiving end of verbal abuse one too many times. Being sent away to boarding school in England at the age of ten because her parents simply didn’t want to parent her had given her a whole host of abandonment issues and a skewed cultural identity. The frequent episodes of cardiac issues had done nothing but given her the complete disregard for the fragility of life that had allowed her to sacrifice her mortal life. However, she said none of this out loud. If Anastasia wished to believe that the video game system was the reason she completely shut down if anybody yelled at her, then she wasn’t sure it was her place to point out that it probably wasn’t.

As the conversation moved onto Lily explaining what in the hell an Eye-Toy was, Kamilah noticed that Anastasia hadn’t eaten as much as she’d expected her to. Her mood was certainly brighter and she didn’t seem as emotionally or physically exhausted, but it seemed once slice of pizza and half a slice of garlic bread along with her blood was all she was in the mood for.

“Everything okay?,” she murmured quietly.

Anastasia nodded. “I just— Its dumb—“

“Not to me,” she assured her. “Not if it’s you.”

“I keep thinking of that display with the balloon and the ping pong ball and it’s fucking with my appetite,” she laughed weakly. “You better not look between my legs whilst that is happening or you will literally never want to have sex with me again.”

For a moment, Kamilah simply regarded her wife and saw immediately that she was nervous and trying to pretend that she wasn’t. It seemed she had arrived at the point in pregnancy when all of sudden the pregnant woman really realised that there was these people inside of them, and somehow they were going to have to get them out. First all they worried about was actually getting pregnant, then staying pregnant, then dealing with the side effects of pregnancy, and then when they were feeling a bit better and enjoying the fun part of getting to know the unborn babies’ habits, they realised that there was no turning back.

She sighed as casually as she could, knowing that in this moment her wife needed her to be as calm and straight to the point as she could possibly be. No rhymes or embellishments. “Bold of you to assume anything could ever dampen my desire for you,” she said, “but if you wish it I will stay by your head the whole time.”

Anastasia’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Really?”

“It’s still your body and any time I get to see it is a privilege you grant me and not a right.” She shrugged. “But I need you to know that you needn’t worry about how I’ll feel about you after seeing you in that condition, okay? Nothing is going to change.”

Anastasia hummed gratefully and leaned against her body, sighing softly as Kamilah pressed a kiss to her hair. “Do you think shopping for more new maternity clothes counts as taking it easy?”

“Indeed, if I’m with you,” she said.

“You hate shopping.”

“I can handle it. In fact, I’m rather looking forward to shopping with you."

She smoothed a hand across her stomach, something she’d taken to doing a lot without even thinking about it. 

“Why?,” giggled Anastasia.

"It’s a caveman thing," she joked.

"Elaborate." 

"When every person sees your bump, they’ll know I was the one you let inside you, they’ll know you’re mine and I’m yours, and that growing inside you is our kids,” she said. “It does wonders for my reputation.”

Anastasia started laughing, turning her face into her shoulder. “You’re such a dork.”

“I’ve made my peace with it,” she sighed happily. “I am, as you say, a massive dork.”

“You are,” Anastasia giggled. “You’re adorable.”

She let out a playfully irritated groan at the compliment and buried her face in her hair. Adorable. One as distinguished and fearsome as she should not go weak at the knees upon hearing such a compliment. 

Yet here she was. 

Weakened by a single word. 

Adorable.

Anastasia was the only person alive who could say such a thing to her without ending up being beaten over the head with their own limb after she unceremoniously tore it from its socket.

“I love you,” she murmured. “So, so much.”

“I love you, too, Kami. Always.”


	9. unexpected, what you did to my heart.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by; At The Beginning by Peter and Evynne Hollens.

When Kamilah had been a child relationships between aristocratic parents and children had been rarely close. Queens and noblewomen alike typically not nurse their own babies, but handed them over at birth into the care of wet nurses and then into the care of an army of servants and governesses, leaving themselves free to become pregnant again. Her own parents, whilst they certainly had not been as involved in her upbringing as she was with her own children’s, had dedicated a great deal of their time to both her and Lysimachus, and their other four brothers — Ammon, Saadah, Cepos, and Rameses — that she could hardly recall with any real clarity at all, as they’d each succumbed to common illnesses in their earliest days of life... as was a fairly common occurrence in the days before modern mortal medicine.

Despite the fact she had mostly been raised by nannies and an endless stream of governesses she’d loathed, she had loved her parents dearly and had adored any time they’d been able to spend with her as a girl. Her mother, Amunet, had been endlessly patient with her blatant disregard for rules and traditions, and had even laughed when she’d appeared at dinner one day as a six year old wearing Lysimachus’ clothes... she’d horrified the elder royals who resided within the palace walls but her mother had applauded her tenacity when it came to expressing her hatred for dresses. Her father, Imhotep, whilst notably less patient, had taught her everything she’d ever needed to know about waging war and handling weapons. They’d been of a very similar temperament, so her lessons with him had often dissolved into screaming matches — even as a child she’d thought nothing of standing her ground and had struggled to respect people without a solid explanation as to why they deserved her respect — but without his early influence she wouldn’t have grown into the woman she’d fought so hard to become. 

If she could be even half the parent that they each were to her, she’d be an incredibly satisfied woman — there was nothing in this world that she would not do to see her family safe and well. Nothing.

“So?,” she prodded as she and Anastasia walked arm and arm from the council meeting in which they’d informed everybody that there had been an unnatural number of Ferals in the park the night before. “Which one of them will be meeting my blades for upsetting the peace? It has been far too long since I executed somebody and I’m rather looking forward to it—“

“Kami,” huffed Anastasia whilst smirking at her in a way that still made her heartbeat quicken. It was a look that told her she thought she was an adorable, murderous maniac, who spent far too long thinking about her knife kink... but she loved her dearly regardless of anything else. She was the only person alive who’d dare look at her in such a manner whilst she was already anticipating an execution with such excitement she couldn’t solidly decide with set of daggers she wished to use.

“I made my peace with the fact I'm going to hell a long time ago, I might as well cause chaos thoroughly.”

She would admit to nobody but her wife how unsettled she was. How she sensed darkness lingering beyond the horizon. It felt like she was trapped in one of those horrific nightmares everybody had occasionally, the ones where they had to run until their lungs started to burn and their limbs started to scream with the agony, but they could not make their body move fast enough to outrun whichever demons were chasing them.

The only person who feared nothing was one who had nothing to lose... and she’d been around for long enough to know that something was brewing.

“I read every mind in the room as you were talking — thank you for stalling for me, by the way — but nobody knows anything,” Anastasia whispered. “The family obviously don’t have anything to do with this, and we knew that going into the meeting. However, the rest of the council and their seconds all being shocked truly wasn’t an act.”

“And your research into daylight rings... does anybody outside of the family know about that?” She dragged Anastasia into a quiet corner of the Raines Corp lobby just across from the play area where the children of employees could play whilst their parents worked. “The last time we saw so many randomly appearing Vega and Nicole were behind it... and it all correlated to Adrian’s serum.”

Anastasia nodded. “The only people outside of the immediate family that I’m aware have knowledge of what I’m doing are Mathew and Tyler, and believe me when I say I’ve tore through their every memory looking for any signs they’ve betrayed our trust... there are none. They both value our trust so much they’d never knowingly betray us.”

“Could someone have peered into their minds?,” Kamilah prodded.

“I have been teaching them to guard their thoughts but it’s... it’s always a possibility... neither of them are naturally gifted with bending their minds as easily as you could when I first taught you.” She ran a hand through her long ginger hair and let out a sigh. “We’ve been careful enough to not mention anything in front of the kids, so I know this can’t be a case of them making casual conversation with friends at school who then tell their parents— but, again, we don’t even know if my research has anything to do with this—“

“I think there’s a fairly good chance it will— or...” She trailed off, her eyes widening. “Do you recall the world council meeting whilst you were pregnant in which you were questioned relentlessly about the extent of your abilities?”

Anastasia nodded. “And I said nobody would know what I was capable of until a situation arose that required me to use different aspects of my abilities.”

“This could be somebody trying to provoke a situation. Or perhaps the mewling mortals that make up the US government truly haven’t learned their lesson— you’d think that infiltrating the minds of high ranking officials and stealing state secrets for collateral would’ve taught them not to dare so much as look at us the wrong way.” She pouted. “Most other nations have gotten the picture and have been smart enough to leave us be— Unless the United Nations have once again thought themselves above their station—“

“We don’t know it’s definitely the mortals, babe. It could be nothing. I’m hoping it might just be a new Turn struggling to control their impulses,” Anastasia soothed, stroking her cheek. 

“You know as well as I do that no new Turn could create that many Ferals without the council liquidating them and their creator for their gross misconduct. We register each and every Turn and hold their creator responsible for their behaviour until their training is complete... we know what each and every one of them is doing at all times.”

Anastasia sighed. “I know...”

“Nobody in Clan Sayeed would dare do something so reckless, as they know damn well their execution would neither be quick nor painless.” She ran a hand haphazardly through the length of her hair. “However I cannot speak for the other Clans, as we all know that the others have made the mistake of allowing their people to get comfortable enough in their presence that they think themselves their equals. Perhaps it is more than one underling ignorant to their place in the grand scheme of things and trying to start their own revolution— but there would be no sensible reason for such an uprising with how things are running. Your popularity and satisfaction within the community have never been higher.”

Anastasia nodded and sighed. “I’ll have to do a lot of psychic gymnastics to figure it out. I’ll start with the minds of mortals who’ve been on our radar before and have Serafine start with lower ranking members of each Clan—“

“We can help,” a familiar little voice said.

When they turned around Jax and Zahra were standing behind them, clearly having wandered out of the playroom upon seeing them through the glass. They were each none the worse off from their heroic battle in Central Park and had been talking about fighting Ferals like it was some sort of new hobby they wished to take up on the weekends.

“I can read minds with Auntie Serafine,” Jax continued.

“I can take names and kick ass,” added Zahra. Kamilah cleared her throat and glared at her, and Zahra sighed like she was already a fifteen year old who thought she knew everything there was to know about life. “Butt,” she begrudgingly corrected herself. “I can take names and kick butt.”

“Better,” she huffed.

Anastasia laughed softly and bent down so she was looking at the children on their eye level. “We appreciate the offer but we are absolutely not having you two becoming some sort of child warriors—“

“But you train us,” pouted Jax.

Kamilah hunkered down to their level. “We train you for self defence. Not so that you can become the council’s pet pit bulls—“

“But, um, in Spy Kids the kids and the parents get to spy,” Zahra pointed out as she stubbornly crossed her arms across her chest and glared at them in a way that just screamed Anastasia. “We could help because nobody would suspect us and nobody but our family knows Jax is psychic and they haven’t seen me fight because my biggest weapon right now is being underestimated.”

Kamilah sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose in dismay. 

How she loathed having her own words thrown back in her face in a rational argument.

“Even the Ferals didn’t overestimate me,” Zahra continued. “They were just focused on kicking our butts and finding a tasty mortal — or a vampire if there were no mortals — to eat before dawn ‘cause the sun hurts them.”

Anastasia was uncharacteristically quiet, her eyes locked on Zahra as her brow furrowed. Kamilah’s dark eyes flickered between them in a state of confusion, as she knew the look on Anastasia’s face well enough to know she was deeply puzzled about something — and she felt the static in the air that most people weren’t able to notice as she tapped into her abilities.

The Bloodkeeper’s beautiful face was calm, unreadable for most people, but there was something in her eyes that Kamilah noticed right away. Something she was either trying very hard to hide or completely at a loss to explain and searching with every ounce of energy she had for an answer.

“How did you know that, honey?,” the Bloodkeeper prodded after a moment. “The Ferals. How did you know what they were thinking?”

“Ferals think?,” Kamilah echoed.

Anastasia nodded. “Primal thoughts that are far less coherent from those of a zoo animal— an insatiable lust for blood... but yeah. They think.”

Zahra’s brow furrowed to mirror Anastasia’s. “I... don’t know. I just— I thought I imagined it.”

“And are the Ferals the only creatures you think you’ve been imagining their thoughts?,” she asked softly.

Zahra nodded her head. “I don’t do it with people or mortals. Just Ferals. It just happens.”

Anastasia nodded and glanced Kamilah’s direction. “Do you remember what happened when we were approaching Demetrius on that island?”

“Of course,” she nodded. “You were empowered by his energy whilst the rest of us were slowly dying from it.”

“His blood runs in their veins and surely as Rheya’s does,” Anastasia murmured. “She wasn’t imagining it...”

“What—“

“She wasn’t?,” Jax gasped, cutting Kamilah off. “No fair! How come she gets to read the minds of Ferals and I can only read vampires?”

“Do you remember when I told you that we are the descendants of the first vampire and the first feral?,” Anastasia said in a remarkably calm voice. Both children nodded. “Jax, you are more connected with the powers bound to Rheya’s blood, which is why you’re able to read vampire minds almost as well as I can. Zahra... I think you are more connected with the powers bound to Demetrius... that would explain why you could read their minds and why you knew they were there before any of us noticed— but because you’d only seen them from afar before last night we weren’t able to pick up any psychic abilities in you...”

Zahra nodded, completely unfazed. “Can I levitate things?”

“Possibly,” Anastasia said. “Psychic abilities come on a very wide spectrum... and now that this one has presented itself you might be able to after learning how to meditate and centre yourself— but I don’t know how easily it would come— even if you can’t right away that doesn’t mean you don’t have other powers over Ferals that we’re unaware of—“

“Show me,” Zahra beamed. “Like you show Jax.”

“Here?,” laughed Anastasia.

“Here,” nodded Zahra. “Pretty please, mommy?”

Anastasia sighed softly and nodded her head. “Deep down, I don’t believe it takes any extraordinary talent for a vampire with any sort of psychic ability to lift themselves off the ground and hover in the air, just a lot of dedication and concentration. The actual mind reading without harming your subject is the hard part. We all have it in us — every man, woman, and child — and with enough hard work and concentration, every psychic being is capable of… the feat.”

Kamilah found herself listening with the same rapt attention the children were.

“You must learn to stop being yourself. That’s where it begins, and everything else follows from that. You must let yourself evaporate. Let your muscles go limp, breathe until you feel your soul pouring out of you, and then shut your eyes. That’s how it’s done. The emptiness inside your body grows lighter than the air around you. Little by little, you begin to weigh less than nothing. You shut your eyes; you spread your arms; you let yourself evaporate. And then, little by little, you lift yourself off the ground.” Anastasia took a deep breath as she began floating a few inches in the air with Jax imitating her. “Like so.”

Zahra took a few deep breaths, but nothing happened and she concluded, after precisely two-and-a-half seconds, “This meditating is far too quiet and still for me. I prefer stabbing things and cutting off heads.”

Everybody started laughing as Jax and Anastasia returned to the ground and The Bloodkeeper pressed a kiss to Zahra’s brow. “We’ll work on it, but that was a heroic first attempt.”

“Does that mean I still have to follow Auntie Lily’s Three-S rule for Ferals if I can read their minds?,” Zahra asked. “What if it’s a friendly Feral who just wants to murder a mean mortal... like the ones who might stab Santa or not give him blood...”

Kamilah frowned. “What’s the Three-S rule?” 

“Shoot, stab, and shut up,” Jax said very matter of factly. “The last S was supposed to be ‘run like shit’ but because we’re not allowed to say shit she changed it to shut up ‘cause they’ll be super dead when we shoot and stab them.”

Anastasia barely managed to restrain a laugh and Kamilah sighed. At this point, she was damn close to giving up her quest to get the children to stop imitating dear old Auntie Lily’s patterns of speaking. 

“Yes,” Anastasia said. “If a Feral is coming for you, you must still kill it. Nobody who becomes a Feral would want to live that way, do you understand me? It’s a kindness and also something we have to do to protect ourselves and the mortals. Once an infected person passes the point where my blood can cure them their death is peaceful, living would be much harder... on everyone.”

“Life sucks... then they die,” Jax deadpanned.

“Yeah, life is a bitch and then they get stabbed—“

“Mommy said bitch, Mama!,” Zahra shrieked with laughter.

“Oh shit— no— I meant— Fuck—,” Anastasia stammered, covering her face as she laughed at herself. “It has been a long night, okay? Ignore me.”

Kamilah snorted, her eyes twinkling at her wife. “Good one, darling.”

Zahra’s eyes lit up. “Can I name the Ferals at least and pretend they’re my arch enemies and I’m Spiderman while I’m stabbing them?”

“Yes,” chuckled Kamilah as she and Anastasia rose to their feet and all four of them joined hands to begin the walk home. “That you can do.”

~~~~ five years earlier ~~~~

“My love, I just received the oddest text from Serafine,” Kamilah said as she wandered out of the bathroom with her toothbrush sticking out of her mouth and toothpaste frothing from her mouth with every word. It was far from a charming sight, but charm had gone out of the window a long time ago and she now thought nothing of Anastasia seeing her in such an undignified state.

“What did she say?,” Anastasia asked from the bed, where she was happily reading War and Peace written in Russian. Their bookshelves were filled with books that were hard to read in multiple languages. Each one could devastate and remake one's soul, and that, when they were finished, had a kick like a mule.

“She wishes to know if we plan to eat the placenta?” She told her wife whilst continuing to brush her teeth, extending her fangs to ensure that they sparkled. “I understand that’s a thing now.”

Anastasia cringed at the thought. “Why the hell does she want to know that?”

“She’s shopping for books and at the bookstore she’s in there is a pregnancy guide with a whole chapter of placenta recipes in the back. Omelets and pasta sauces and so on.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Anastasia laughed. “It sounds gross and will have no benefits for us anyway.”

“Indeed,” she agreed, mentally thanking whichever gods were listening that her wife wasn’t the type to want to do this. “Dining on the placenta is basically cannibalism, and I was hoping for a more dignified introduction to parenthood.”

“Rabbit mothers eat their own babies, you know,” Anastasia said. “I found that out reading Watership Down. Apparently the mothers chew on their newborns all the time. Pop them down just like little meat Skittles.”

She snorted. If anybody else had to just drop that fact in casual conversation to her she’d likely have run a mile to get away from them or whipped out her blades to teach them a lesson for being so odd in her presence. Marriage was a wonderful thing— here she was slobbering toothpaste everywhere and her other half was talking about cannibal rabbits and they somehow still found each other sexually attractive.

Standing there in such a candid moment, she realised that despite the fact she did not know how much time they had left together; could be fifty years, could be one more week, could be twenty-thousand years of life. But she did know that they were not going to get cheated out of one second of being together. They were going to share everything and feel everything together. And she was going to let her wife know, in the way she touched her, and the way she kissed her that she was the best thing in her life. And she was a selfish woman, and she wanted every inch of her, and every minute of her life she could have. There was no her life anymore. And no Anastasia’s life. Just their life, and they were going to have it their way.

“You think I’m a freak, don’t you?,” smirked Anastasia.

“I reached that conclusion a long time ago,” she smirked right back at her.

“I—“ She was cut off by a text message coming through on her own phone and she heaved a sigh. “Is Lily with Serafine right now, by any chance?”

Kamilah spat the remaining toothpaste in her mouth in the bathroom sink and yelled through the open door, “I have no idea. Why?”

“Because she’s saying we should mix the Placenta with coke.”

“The soda or the drug?”

“The soda... I think. But I’m really not entirely sure because she ate a whole batch of special brownies for breakfast this morning so she’s not making much sense.”

She leaned against the bathroom doorframe. “Does she ever make sense?”

“I mean... sometimes... but right now she’s having some sort of existential crisis, I think,” giggled Anastasia. “Listen to her last text: You know, we might’ve fucked up the planet; sucking out all the oil, melting the ice caps, allowing disco music to flourish and The Straightys to reign supreme for so fucking long, but we made Coke, so goddamn it, people ain’t all bad.”

“There is nothing in that which discerns which Coke she’s referring to— you know what? I do not even want to know what the fool is getting herself into this time.” She huffed. “Just... ensure she knows I will not be rescuing her if she once again ‘accidentally’ happens upon an orgy for furries— and make sure she’s drinking water... and looks both ways before crossing the street because intentionally getting hit by taxis and buses then suing for compensation is not a sane individual’s hobby—“ Anastasia’s phone buzzed again. “What now?”

The Bloodkeeper started laughing and turned around her phone to display a picture of Lily laying in... a coffin. Evidently age and maturity would never go together and whichever gothic book shop in Brooklyn their friends had found themselves in after a few cocktails was quite clearly run by the oddest sort of mortals who romanticised death far too much.

“She said she’ll see me in four days time,” Anastasia laughed. “You know how I love a good joke about my death.”

“For pity's sake, she is lying in a coffin, Annie.” She sighed. “Tell her that unless she wishes to be buried, I strongly suggest that she resurrect herself immediately.”

“You should just be glad she’s no longer getting hit by Subways because she likes freaking people out when she just stands up, dabs, and walks away after.”

She heaved an exhausted sigh as she threw herself dramatically onto the mattress at Anastasia’s side, landing face down. “That phase continues to be the bane of my entire existence. It is a wonder I didn’t stake her.”

Anastasia caressed the back of her head in convalescing caress. “You only stabbed her like twenty times.”

“Twenty-five. I kept count,” she groaned. “You got irritated with the amount of blood on my blouses and threatened to hide my daggers if I didn’t stop stabbing her every time she threw herself in front of a coming train for views on that godforsaken TikTok application.”

“What a time to have been alive.”

She huffed in amusement and rolled onto her back so that she could gaze up at her beloved sat against the pillows. “Indeed... the thirty-nine years that have passed since our first meeting have certainly been eventful, haven’t they?”

Anastasia smiled softly and brushed a few strands of dark hair out of her face for her before closing her book on her lap. “It hits me at random moments that I’ve lived more of my life with you than I ever did not knowing you.”

“And how does that feel, my love?”

“You’ll see for yourself one day,” Anastasia murmured, the subtlest little smile playing on her lips.

“2,024 years from now,” she chuckled as she placed her hand on her belly. “God only knows how many generations of great grandchildren we’ll have by then.”

“Can you promise me now you’ll stake me if I wind up being as psycho a granny as Rheya was?,” giggled Anastasia. “We have to break the cycle of mad grannies trying to fuck up the world and kill their great great great great — I don’t even know how many greats — grandchildren.”

She snorted. “It is my dream to eventually have enough offspring that we could start our own country and reign supreme over them all—“

“To restart the Ptolemaic Egyptian Empire, basically,” Anastasia interjected, playing along.

“Only without all the incest in the name of blood purity.” Her dark eyes sparkled with mirth. “You’ll have conquered daylight rings long before our children are even old enough to slam doors in our faces and get themselves into Lily Spencer levels of trouble that we’ll have to get them out of.” She bit down on her bottom lip as she felt a hard kick beneath her palm that seemed to be agreeing with everything she was saying. “I see no reason why we could not restore Egypt to its former glory and populate it with our descendants. We could build our own palace.”

“A better one than Antirhodos?”

“Naturally,” she nodded. “And, contrary to what you might think, not only to spite Cleopatra beyond the grave. I intend to be a fairly hands on grandmother. There must be enough room for generations of budding anarchists to learn how to properly slit a man’s throat— and a dungeon to lock Lily in when she inevitably pisses me off... because we both know the fool will one day be living in our basement with her video game systems and collection of vibrators to keep her happy.”

At that they both dissolved into laughter and Anastasia slid down the bed so they were laying shoulder to shoulder on top of the duvet.

“That’s a beautiful dream, Kami.”

“Flatterer,” she teased, lacing their fingers together.

“You accuse me of flattery!,” Anastasia huffed in amusement. “Here I waddle about like a fat old duck and you try to tell me I'm lovely—“

“You’re the most dazzlingly beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” she said truthfully. 

Anastasia blushed and rested her free hand on her belly. “Even now?”

“Especially now. You are my wife. You fulfill my every dream. Nothing could ever send me away.” She brought their joined hands to her lips and pressed a reverent kiss to her knuckles as she rolled onto her side and pressed their foreheads together. “After over two thousand years of solitude and an indescribable sadness in my heart, it is a wondrous thing to have you and to lay here dreaming about an entire country full of family. Nothing could ever please me more.”

Anastasia bit down on her bottom lip. “We really are standing at the beginning of something incredible, aren’t we?”

“We are,” she whispered, smiling contentedly. It was blissful, this happiness and well being, those rare, unexpected moments when the voices in her head went silent and she felt at one with the world.

How odd it was to think that thirty-nine years earlier she had walked through a night blooming garden with the love of her life for the very first time and had told her that she didn't have a heart. How delightful it was to have been proven wrong. She did have one. She had always had one. She just didn't know it until she met her. She was her light. Her soul craved her, and she loved her with every ounce of the heart she’d awakened in her.

She doubted that she would be able to sleep with so many exciting things on the horizon. There were too many things to digest, too many images churning in her ancient mind, but the moment her head touched the pillow and her little spoon was nestled in her embrace, she began to lose consciousness. She felt as if she’d been clubbed, as if her skull had been crushed by a stone. Some things were too glorious to think on for too long, perhaps, and the only way to let them settle however they naturally would was to escape, to turn your back on them and steal off into the comforting darkness of sleep with the other half of your heart laying so close.


	10. i’m gonna carry you home.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by; Forest Fire by Brighton

“Yo, when I signed up be experimented on I did not expect to trip out like that,” Lily laughed hysterically from her position on a hospital gurney set up in the Raines Corp laboratories. “How the fuck does wearing a ring do that? You could legit make billions off of that!”

Anastasia sighed as Adrian monitored the entirely unfazed Lily’s vitals as she recovered from her experience. Whilst he attended to her, Anastasia fiddled around with confusing looking equipment at one of the stations across the room and gave them the theory she had as to why this round of testing daylight rings had failed. 

It had something to do with electromagnetic fields... and everybody but The Bloodkeeper and Adrian seemed absolutely lost despite the fact it was being explained in laymen’s terms. She was very much out of her element here. There were moments, listening to the conversations going on around her led by Adrian and Anastasia, when she felt she was going to lose her mind.

“Ma petite, I still don’t quite understand,” Serafine said. “Lily was rambling about ghosts after wearing the ring for ten minutes in the sun. Why would a certain type of electromagnetic field make one hear things or sense a presence? What’s the mechanism behind it?”

“The answer hinges on the fact that exposure to electromagnetic fields lowers melatonin levels,” Anastasia explained without missing a beat. “Melatonin is an anti-convulsive; if you have less of it in your system, your brain — in particular, your right temporal lobe — will be more prone to tiny epileptic-esque micro-seizures and the subtle hallucinations these seizures can cause. Not even vampires are immune to it.”

Adrian’s eyebrows shot up. “You seem sure—“

“I told you when I took the last blood sample that I didn’t need proof to know. I just needed an inclination,” Anastasia smirked as she stepped away from her microscope and beckoned Adrian over to her. “And I was right. Her melatonin levels became nonexistent after a few minutes with direct exposure to the electromagnetic field created by the ring.”

Adrian audibly gasped whilst inspecting the slide stained with a swatch of Lily’s blood. “Good god... you’re right— It’s one thing to have an inclination or get enough evidence to convince yourself, but it’s a whole other matter to produce a demonstration that would be acceptable to a community of scientists. I— well done.”

“You owe me a drink,” laughed Anastasia as she affectionately clapped Adrian on the shoulder.

“So... what are your next steps?,” Kamilah prodded.

“Well she didn’t burn at all. At ten minutes without the ring in direct sunlight we should have seen a first degree sunburn beginning to turn into a second degree burn, so it’s obvious that this generation of it does work,” Anastasia said. “I just have to find a way to offer protection against the intensity of the electromagnetism... which shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard?,” Adrian sighed. “Some would argue that it’s the most difficult part—“

“Orgonite, Adrian,” Anastasia interjected. “If I add Orgone to the silver bands of the rings there will be a higher degree of EMF protection— the FDA might’ve been so whipped by Big Pharma that they banned it for use in mortal products and spoke out of their asses about it but I agreed to no such ban within the vampire community.”

Without a word Adrian started clapping his hands, seeming so truly humbled that tears began forming in his eyes. “Anastasia... you’ve actually done it. You do realise that, don’t you?”

Anastasia shrugged bashfully and giggled. “I mean— It wasn’t all me. I stood on the shoulders of giants and—“

“You grasped at straws and once again have accomplished the impossible,” Adrian interjected. “I sense another Nobel Prize in the near future.”

Kamilah caressed her wife’s cheek. “I may have understood exactly three words out of that whole conversation but I am immensely proud of you.”

Anastasia pushed herself onto her tiptoes and kissed her. “Thank you, love.”

This was the most wonderful problem with once having had walls so hard and high and unscalable, she supposed, as she stared into the oceans of Anastasia’s eyes. When they came down, they crumbled completely, shattering into nothingness. She felt utterly defenseless right now by simply looking into her eyes.

“How do you plan to distribute them?,” Adrian asked.

“Everybody can get one,” Anastasia shrugged. “I think it’d be really selfish and setting a dangerous precedent if I’d to make a profit or deny anybody the right to one. You’ll all get one first and the kids, then the average everyday people without power starting with families with children and then the rest, and lastly the Councils and Clan leaders around the world—“

Serafine snorted. “They won’t take kindly to being served last.”

“Their inflated sense of self importance needs toned down and I don’t want to be seen as pandering to what is essentially just a different version of the traditional mortal aristocracy,” Anastasia shrugged. “It’s all politics.”

“I say we sell ‘em for one-hundred-thousand-dollars a pop,” Lily called from the gurney she was now standing up on as if it were a surf board for some reason. She was, evidently, feeling much better. “A million if you want the upgraded version that shoots lasers or some really cool shit. Ten million if you want one that talks to you and composes dramatic theme songs for you so you feel like your living in your own movie when you’re at Whole Foods buying white people food. Then we take the money and just fuck shit up for the hell of it.”

Everybody shared a laugh at that. Trust Lily to turn a simple piece of jewellery into the sort of technology one would expect to see in a Will Smith movie.

“Come, my love,” Kamilah said. “We have to pick the children up from school.”

“How much trouble would I be in if I stole this bad boy and used it as a skateboard?,” Lily snorted. “Serafine and Adrian, since y’all wanna start running you could push me.”

“I will not be paying your bail if you get yourself arrested, once again, for being a public nuisance,” she deadpanned.

“Jimmy Neutron over here would be my first call anyway... like imagine her just walking into jail and rescuing me the way Michael Langdon was bailed out in AHS!”

“Are you comparing yourself to the antichrist?,” Anastasia laughed.

“Hell yeah. Homeboy’s whole aesthetic was goals.” Lily nodded. “Straight people walking at like one mile an hour and tourists stopping in the middle of the street to take pics of buildings would consider me cruising down the street on a gurney the height of evil.”

Without even bothering to feed into this ridiculous discussion, she took her wife’s arm and began leading her away as everybody gathered their belongings. They stopped at the doorway and watched everybody leave as Anastasia looked into the retina scanner by the door to lock the lab up. Adrian and Serafine could be heard from all the way down the hallway arguing that them wishing to start running as a hobby in their free time didn’t mean they wanted to push Lily around Manhattan on a gurney... and then Adrian had the audacity to ask who Michael Langdon was and that started a whole other conversation that she had absolutely no desire to be apart of.

Lily Spencer would never find out she had actually enjoyed American Horror Story, as Anastasia was sworn to secrecy.

“So tonight Zahra has figure skating and Jax has a piano lesson— the skating coach wishes us to ask Zahra not to talk about how easy it would be to behead a mortal trying to stab Santa with her skates... apparently it makes people nervous,” Kamilah snorted as she and Anastasia climbed into the back of their chauffeured Rolls Royce.

Anastasia didn’t even try to hide her amusement. “I really shouldn’t find it so funny she’s so willing to defend Santa.”

“Well you’d better try not to laugh as you’re the one taking her tonight,” she laughed. “Sitting at the side of the rink observing the lesson last week and overhearing the remark was one of the most comical moments of my life— when did her obsession with mortals stabbing Santa begin, exactly?”

“The Dark Solstice when we established that Santa was a vampire and mortals were mean for not giving him blood.”

“Ah,” she nodded. “How could I forget?”

Anastasia laughed softly and patted her thigh. “It’s Cipriani’s for dinner, right?”

“Mathew made arrangements for our usual table. We’ll congregate there after the extracurriculars,” she confirmed. “Are you trying to perform another psychic training session with Zahra at some point tonight?”

“Tomorrow,” Anastasia replied. “We promised since it’s Friday we’d watch a movie with popcorn before bed and they’ve already decided on Shrek.”

A soft laugh escaped her lips and she squeezed Anastasia’s hand tightly. “Look at us. We’re on our way to pick our children up from school discussing extracurricular activities and I’m mentally preparing myself to watch an animated movie about an ogre. Who would’ve thought it possible?”

Anastasia sighed happily and rested her head on her shoulder. “I’m warning you now, you have a lot of mental preparing to do because there are four movies.”

“A months worth of Friday nights are going to be spent watching said movies, aren’t they?”

“They are.”

She snorted and kissed the top of her wife’s hair. “So long as none of the characters live in a pineapple under the sea, I think that could be rather agreeable.”

“A donkey marries a dragon and they have hybrid babies called dronkeys.”

Her jaw dropped and she shook her head in a state of utter dismay. “I don’t even want to know how that is possible.”

The journey from Raines Corp to The Shadow Den wasn’t long at all and the traffic was surprisingly good. However, the moment they drew into the alley that contained one of the secret entrance tunnels they both practically flew from the car at the sound of multiple Feral heartbeats echoing from the secret city.

“Kami—“

“They know how to protect themselves and each other,” she assured her as they sprinted side by side down the tunnel and straight towards the school, followed by their Chauffeur. “And there are multiple grown vampires living here who know heads would roll if anything happened to them.”

“Lily is on her way,” called Elena Vo as she beheaded a Feral. “They came outta nowhere!”

It was little more than an unorganised bloodbath, with vampires and Ferals going head-to-head everywhere and trying to protect the passageway that lead to the school, however it was clear that some Ferals had managed to break through.

A piercing screech from below the massive adventure playground caught her attention the moment they ran into the area where the children played at recess. However, it was the arm landing beside her with little milk fang marks that let her know what was going on. 

“Can you please be a little more careful where you let body parts fall?!,” Jax shrieked. “You almost ruined my Gap hoodie!”

“Just dodge them like dodgeball!,” Zahra called from a bridge suspended between two of the wooden playhouses. 

“I don’t want to— they’re here, Zahra! I told you they’d come!,” Jax beamed as he kicked the knees out from behind a Feral and then used his abilities to tear it apart.

“What happened?,” Kamilah prodded as she stood back-to-back with their son and started plunging her daggers into Ferals.

“Zahra did it by mistake,” Jax said. 

“I didn’t mean it,” Zahra practically sobbed when Anastasia reached her side. 

“Honey, this isn’t your fault,” Anastasia assured her.

“It is, mommy,” Zahra whimpered, losing focus on the fight. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to be bad!”

Anastasia immediately scooped her up and then her abilities filled the air. Not so much that her eyes were red and glowing, but enough that every Feral that hadn’t yet been killed seemed seized by it.

Her power grew angry that it was confined to her petite frame and pulled against her taut skin. Growing bolder, it tore through her skin to lay flat against her outer edge. The glowing energy began to solidify against her flesh; it lengthened to mold itself to her frame and contained her and Zahra in a transparent cocoon. 

She flexed her fingers against the shimmering surface and one by one the Ferals began to crumble to ash. Everybody paused to catch their breath as Anastasia finished the fight. The panic in peoples faces vanished and Kamilah didn’t need psychic abilities to feel their thoughts... to sense their relief.

“What happened?,” she asked softly as she and Jax climbed up into the playhouse where Anastasia was catching her breath and trying to console a wailing Zahra.

Back in Central Park when the Ferals were coming for her, she didn’t even blink. But this time, she was scared — beyond scared. She was terrified. And whatever had her scared? Kamilah just knew she didn’t want any part of it... it frightened her, too.

“I did it,” Zahra sobbed into Anastasia’s chest.

“You didn’t do it, honey,” Kamilah soothed as she stroked her hair. “There are lots of Ferals running lose in the city at the moment. We don’t know who made them but it wasn’t you.”

“We were just talking about fight Ferals in the park and Jacob Northmun said he wanted to fight Ferals,” Jax said. “Then some other kids said they wanted to and Zahra said she could make some appear... and then she did.”

Kamilah caught Anastasia’s eyes and saw right away she was already rifling through both of their children’s memories to see exactly what had transpired.

“You’re both safe now,” she assured them, drawing them into a tight hug. “And you fought admirably.”

“How do you both feel about taking a vacation to Uncle Adrian’s cabin?,” The Bloodkeeper asked the moment she emerged from their thoughts. Kamilah knew immediately that something was really wrong and she was trying to sound as upbeat as she could about it.

“Hell yeah!,” Jax beamed. “That’ll make you feel happy, Zahra!”

Zahra sniffled and wiped at her eyes. “I’d like that.”

“Jax, take Zahra and get both of your backpacks,” Anastasia said as they all climbed down from the playhouse. “I need to talk to Mama for a minute.”

Jax pulled a slightly mashed Twinkie from his pocket and handed it to his sister sheepishly. 

“How old is that?,” Zahra murmured. 

“Auntie Lily says these things have enough preservatives in them to keep them on the shelves until the year 3000,” he whispered as he wrapped a protective arm around his sister’s shoulders and led her towards their classroom. The moment that they were out of earshot Kamilah turned to Anastasia.

“What is going on? She’s five... she can’t possibly be creating Ferals.”

“She’s not the one creating them but she is controlling them, Kami. Not in a malicious way at all... but her powers over them have grown since we discovered them last week— even since our last training session two nights ago,” Anastasia whispered. 

Her brow furrowed. “Annie... what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I haven’t felt an influence over Ferals this strong since I spoke with Demetrius—“

“Is she going to go the way he did— killing everything within her vicinity just by existing?!”

The fear she felt at that moment was paralysing. She knew only too well how hard it was for one to peel back the glossy veneer of their life, and to peek at the real in horrendous situations like this. It was like waking up in a familiar room and getting out of bed in the dark and realising all the furniture had been completely rearranged. You would eventually find your way out of it, but it was going to be slow going, and you were bound to get some bruises along the way.

Anastasia swallowed thickly. “I... I don’t know. I honestly don’t know how her powers are going to develop. That’s why we need to get her out of the city until I can figure this out. The less people around her, the better— Jax’s blood offers him protection and you can drink from me to protect yourself— I want you to start now—“

“Annie—“

Anastasia offered her wrist and said. “You remember how being close to Demetrius made you feel. You need my blood in your system because her abilities are developing so quickly... and I don’t know if or when she’ll develop that sort of toxicity. But if she does, it will not happen slowly, Demetrius’ story tells us that much.”

The sound of Anastasia’s voice startled her. As it turned out, one could actually function whilst their heart was being torn to shreds. Blood pumped, breath flowed, neurons fired. What went missing was the affect to it all; a curious flatness to a normally musical voice and actions that, if noted, spoke only of a hole so deep inside there was no visible end to it.

She swallowed thickly. “How much do I need to drink?”

“Just a few sips.”

They were both trembling violently as Kamilah’s fangs pierced her wrist and she began to drink. The familiar taste of Anastasia’s blood began trickling into her mouth the moment she with drew her fangs and started suckling the small puncture wounds above her hammering pulse.

“Annie,” she whimpered, wiping her crimson stained lips. “Tell me you know how to stop her from becoming like him...”

Anastasia drew a deep, shuddered breath but didn’t answer the question. “You need to get the keys from Adrian and go home as quickly as you can and start packing at least a months worth of stuff for us. I need to go back to Raines Corp to gather equipment from the labs, I— I’ll figure this out. If I can’t do it psychically then I’ll do it with science... there’s always an answer.. always.”

“Promise me we are not going to lose our daughter,” she whispered.

Anyone who had ever experienced a strange episode in their life that defied all present scientific and psychic knowledge could appreciate the limits of knowledge altogether and understand exactly how fearful Kamilah was. There was nothing like such an event to make one keenly aware of how little they truly knew and understood. But her wife was one of the smartest — if not the smartest — and the most powerful person in the world. She’d figure this out... wouldn’t she?

Then Anastasia’s lips were on hers and she lost herself, overwhelmed by the surge of her emotions as they flooded through her. She kissed her back wanting to forget her fear and focus only on how good it felt being in her arms. After all relinquishing some control was a sacrifice worth making if it meant their family could continue to live in their blissful domestic fantasy.

Anastasia’s face settled into one of sheer determination when they broke apart. It was a look Kamilah had seen on her face many times before. It was a look that asked, what if the jigsaw puzzle of the world was a shape one didn't fit into? And the only way to survive was to mutilate oneself, carve away their corners, sand themselves down, modify themselves to fit it? It was a look that wondered, how come people hadn’t been determined enough to be able to change the puzzle instead? 

It was a look that promised to do just that, if need be. 

It was a look that promised to changed the world.

And when the Bloodkeeper spoke, that same determination echoed in the only two whispered words Kamilah needed to hear to feel like everything might just be alright. “I promise.”

~~~~ five years earlier ~~~~

“I fail to understand why the mortals coined these gatherings as ‘baby showers’. It is almost as confusing as bachelorette parties or gender reveal parties,” Kamilah murmured as she sipped on a non-alcoholic strawberry daiquiri and observed the gathering full of the few people in the world she didn’t loathe entirely... and the rest she was obligated to spend time with because they were Clan Sayeed. “Not that I cannot appreciate people wanting to celebrate our family... but the invention of so many social gatherings at some point in the twentieth century is baffling to me. Who the hell wishes to socialise this much?”

Anastasia huffed in amusement. “Not a fan of the name suggestion board Serafine added at the last minute?”

She glared at the ridiculous board upon which guests at the party could write name suggestions for their children. It would’ve been a sweet idea, had Lily not written over five different variations of the names ‘Liliana’ and ‘Liliano’ and then shoved a pillow up her shirt to take a ridiculous picture next to it in order to imitate some idiotic mortal who’d had the audacity to curse her spawn with the name Lakynn.

It was names like Lakynn that made her thankful mortals only lived an average of eight or nine decades. No self respecting vampire would ever name their offspring after a direction or whatever the hell Elon Musk named one of his children.

“I think the spellings Lily suggested for those ridiculous names is borderline child abuse.”

“What do you mean? I think Lileighahnna and Lileighahnno are innovative,” Anastasia teased. “Pure creative genius.”

“I personally prefer Lilaéanna and Lilaéanno,” she fired back. “The accent above the E and the unnecessary double N adds a layer of sophistication one would not expect.”

Anastasia giggled. “Who suggested Paitynn and Asher?”

“I don’t know but those are the whitest names I’ve ever heard,” Kamilah grumbled. 

“Whiter than Saylor and Tatum? What about Baylee and Maverick? Or Autumn and Abel?”

“These people should be banned from procreating.”

Before Anastasia could say a word Mathew and Tyler appeared with a box of treats from a French bakery on The Upper East Side that Kamilah had sent them out specifically to fetch for her beloved.

“Fancy French food that I can’t pronounce without making an ass of myself!,” Mathew panted, handing the box over to her. “Was that quick enough, Boss Lady?”

“It was perfectly satisfactory,” she nodded. 

Mathew and Tyler high-fived and Mathew whispered to his husband as they walked away, “That was practically a compliment, babe!”

“What is all this and why do they look like they’ve just ran the Boston Marathon?,” laughed Anastasia.

“Guess.”

“Macarons?,” she guessed after a moment.

Kamilah payed especially close attention to what her wife wanted to eat each day. She was picky to the point she usually wouldn’t dream of touching most foods and actually had an aversion to certain textures and temperatures. But now that she was pregnant she seemed to be more open to trying things and now had a constant craving for the French desserts, even though she’d hated them so much that she had actually vomited after trying them as a mortal.

Kamilah nodded. "I did my research and there are so many flavours. Yesterday you requested strawberry cheesecake, today you mentioned vanilla. No telling about tomorrow... so I got every flavour the bakery had to offer.”

Tears started welling in Anastasia’s eyes and Kamilah snorted, having already preempted that the gesture would cause a hormonal flood of tears. Though she didn’t mind it too much at all, as she loved making her wife happy. After all this time, it turned out that the best way to atone for doing as many things as blatantly wrong as she had done in her life was to do just as many things blatantly right.

“Kami— Thank you. That might be the sweetest thing anybody has ever done for me...”

“Mhm,” she hummed, not even bothering to argue that point as she drew her in and kissed her temple. Arguing with a pregnant woman was a fools errand anyway. “There, there. Eat up, my darling, before Lily spots your desserts and tries to steal them.”

“You have my permission to stab first and think later if anybody tries to touch my food.”

She smirked. “I assure you, anyone who dares try will not live to tell the tale.”

Looking around the party held in The Plaza Hotel’s ballroom, it was hard to believe that she had ever called vampires: breathing ghosts. For, as she had observed in the first two thousand years of her life, they had existed in a kind of limbo-land between the living and the dead. They had breathed, but they had not been truly alive... not really. They had flitted through the air, but they still left foot prints on the ground. They had been, and they were, neither one nor the other, but something else entirely.

Serafine and Adrian had done a wonderful job planning the party. Lily had been banned from their little party planning committee the moment she’d suggested incorporating laser tag and go karting... and had instead been put in charge of organising the menu. Which was exactly why there was not a healthy snack in sight.

“Mathew and Tyler just suggested the names Nefertiti and Akhenaten,” she sighed, drawing Anastasia’s attention away from deciding which flavour of macaron to eat first. “My parents would roll in their tomb should they hear those names even mentioned within the vicinity of the woman carrying their grandchildren.”

Anastasia snorted. “They didn’t like what they did to Egypt?”

“Not many people had any love for them at all. The Thutmosid Dynasty was considered little more than an embarrassment by many Ptolemaics. Even though we, ourselves, were far from perfect we judged the people of the Eighteenth Dynasty as nothing more than heretical fools. I see now it was jealousy, perhaps, that their dynasty was more powerful than our own,” she mused, brushing a strand of hair behind Anastasia’s ear for her. “My mother would throw her sandal across the room at anybody dared mention their names where she could hear— I had the misfortune of being hit in the face once when my father stepped out of the way too quickly for her to adjust her already very poor aim.”

Anastasia patted her cheek. “God help anyone who’d hit you in the face with a sandal.”

“I was certainly displeased enough to have snuck into her room in the night to steal her sandals,” she reminisced. “They wound up floating in The Nile— I mean, the audacity! With all my childish sensibilities I decided she deserved the retribution.”

“You blamed it on Lysimachus, didn’t you?”

“I tried.” She sighed wistfully. “He was much too dignified to behave in such a manner so everybody knew it was me... but I did not confess before first blaming the donkeys that roamed the grounds of our summer villa, the servants, three priestesses, a baboon, a heard of cattle, a foreman in charge of building a local temple, and no less than twelve visiting Greek diplomats.”

The Bloodkeeper smiled softly and offered her one of her desserts. “You sound like such a delightful child.”

“Indeed. I actually believe knowing Lily is the karma from all my childish misdeeds,” she huffed accepting the snack. “What flavour is this?”

“It’s... lavender coconut.”

“It seems the mortals have created yet another snack food I find almost as agreeable as gummy bears.” She nodded approvingly. “I’ve been reading that whilst one’s partner is in labour there needs to be ample sustenance in order to be a supportive partner. The blood sugar must be kept in good balance, apparently... so I may be adding a selection of gummy bears to our hospital bag.”

“Gummy bears aren’t a meal, dork.”

“They can be if you’re dedicated to consume enough,” she argued with a smile on her face as she stole another lavender coconut macron. “You could even decorate one of these French desserts with one if you were feeling fancy.”

“I— oh,” Anastasia cut herself off abruptly as she flinched and her eyes widened, her hands flying down to her stomach, “ah..”

“What?,” she yelped, her hands covering her wife’s on her belly. 

“Braxton Hicks,” Anastasia murmured through gritted teeth.

She slowly rubbed her back with one hand and offered her the other to squeeze until her discomfort ended. These false contractions had been happening more regularly as her pregnancy progressed and Anastasia had described them as feeling oddly like severe menstrual cramps — whilst it had been more than two thousand years since she had experienced that pain, she certainly remembered how uncomfortable she had felt as a mortal when those cramps had hit.

Their doctor had assured her on multiple occasions that these were normal and absolutely nothing to worry about, so long as the pains were sporadic and irregular. However that didn’t mean she wasn’t internally panicking whenever they hit... but she did her best to be cool, calm, and collected.

Today's worries would be yesterday's fears and tomorrow's stories, after all. 

“You’re doing wonderfully,” she murmured, never stilling the hand on her upper back. “Deep breaths, my love. Nice and slow.” 

Anastasia nodded and her grip tightened on her hand for around thirty seconds before she relaxed. “Sorry about your hand,” she giggled.

Kamilah exhaled a breath she wasn’t aware she had been holding and managed a small laugh. “My hands have been through much worse and will undoubtedly be squeezed a great deal harder whilst you’re actually giving birth.”

Anastasia brought her hand to her lips and kissed her knuckles. “Just make sure you pack some blood with your gummy bears when you’re organising your snacks. I don’t want to, like, break your hand by accident whilst I’m pushing two people out of me.”

She cast her a bemused smirk. “That means less gummy bears... and we are going to be in a hospital. It is not like I could not steal a bag of blood from somewhere, should my bones wind up crushed in the thralls of labour.”

“You are not stealing blood from a hospital,” Anastasia laughed.

“I believe I have been spending too much time with Lily. That is the only explanation I will accept as to why I would even consider the notion exciting,” she chuckled. 

“That’s not the reason.”

“By all means, enlighten me.”

“When it’s just us you actually get really silly and dorky when you’re excited about something and it’s adorable.”

She huffed at the word and felt warmth rising to her cheeks.

A woman of her age should not find herself weakened by the word adorable.

It was maddening.

“You enjoy tormenting me with that word far too much,” she grumbled, stealing another macaron for spite. 

“I am heavily pregnant with your children and willingly sharing my food with you. I think teasing you is perfectly fair.”

“Then tease away, my darling. Tease away.”


	11. i held on as tightly as you held onto me.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by; To Build A Home by Glen & Ronan.

Some days one woke up and they already knew that things were not going to go well. The the type of days when you should just give in, put your pyjamas back on, make some hot tea and read books in bed with the covers up until the world looked more encouraging. 

Of course, they never let you do that.

“Is there nothing you can do on a psychic level to block off her abilities entirely?,” Kamilah sighed as she and her wife washed up the dishes from their dinner by hand in the kitchen sink. Adrian hadn’t added any modern appliances to his cabin in centuries and they’d become so reliant on a dishwasher that they didn’t even own rubber gloves to protect their nails from chipping doing so much manual labour. 

However, they’d framed this sudden rustic experience as a vacation and the children were having the time of their lives. The two weeks they’d spent upstate had been blissful to the children. Their nights had been spent running like wild animals through the woods and climbing trees, and they’d even gone swimming in a lake on the far side of Adrian’s property. 

Outside the large windows they could be seen swinging upside down from a tree branch pretending to be bats and their laughter was carried on the gentle breeze through the opened kitchen window. The fact that they were enjoying this so much made it bearable... even if they’d picked so many wildflowers that the cabin smelled like the bastard child of a florist and a perfume shop.

“I’m already blocking her outside of my lessons with her, Kami,” Anastasia said. “I took her to the clearing just off the driveway when you were doing hand to hand with Jax and the minute I lifted my psychic block the leaves on a tree that was just beginning to blossom turned shades of orange and brown— even Kano has no idea what else I can to do besides keeping her blocked off and praying the toxicity doesn’t become anything more than an emotional response before I understand exactly why she’s developing so many of Demetrius’ qualities.”

They both heaved sighs. 

Zahra’s lessons weren’t going well at all. The development of psychic abilities required one to be peaceful, patient, and still, and by nature Zahra was none of those things. She wished to hit and kick and punch and stab, as opposed to meditating and making progress slowly and steadily.

At first it was simply that her abilities would not come off the way she intended them to. Or they would, but with the most unexpected results. She would try to move a small object, a stick; it would overturn. She would try again and the leaves on the stick would burst into flames. On the third try it might fly at her own head, or anybody’s who happened to be in her vicinity. The week before she attempted a simple messenger trick where she would mentally whisper a word that somebody could hear inside their head, and in the space of five minutes every spider, centipede, and earwig in the state of New York came swarming in under the door of this godforsaken cabin. Anastasia had began conducting her training outside after that.

Attempting to levitate, she blew up an entire grove of apple trees Adrian had planted on the property in 1862. A simple summoning, butterflies Kamilah believed Anastasia had told her to try, and all the horses in the surrounding farming counties went so crazy for an hour that the local news had reported on it. Things had soon reached such a state that whenever anything unusual happened within the state, Kamilah had begun suspecting their daughter’s strange abilities were to blame for it.

In spite of all the blunders, all the destruction, Anastasia knew the power was there. She could feel it, even when Zahra could not. For she did succeed now and then, but so erratically! The poor child was devastated. She had been brought to tears just trying to light a candle. Then there was the time she threw a brick through the window of Adrian’s 1920 Rolls Royce he had stored in the garage. But Anastasia never wavered in her support and patience. She taught what she knew, regardless of when she learned it — she taught what she learned yesterday sagely, as if she had known it all her life, and she taught what she had known for decades with enthusiasm, as if she had learned it only yesterday. And even she and Jax were doing whatever they could to be as supportive as they could be... despite the fact they could do little to help her gaining control and understanding over her abilities.

Her favourite part of watching Zahra’s lessons was something that Anastasia would say to her whenever she started questioning herself. It was something she, herself, had decided to store in her mind for when she needed an encouraging word and her wife wasn’t nearby. Anastasia would say: ‘Talent will only take you to Good. Practice will take you to Master.’

“What exactly is it that you’re blocking in her mind?,” she asked after a moment. 

“Strong negative emotions... her abilities get harder for her to control if she’s upset and we’ve established that’s when Ferals seem most drawn to her. In Central Park she was losing the game, then Ferals appeared. In school somebody said she was too little to fight Ferals and that pissed her off so much an army of them managed to break through the Shadow Den’s defences just to prove a point.” Anastasia sighed as she sat the last freshly cleaned plate on the drying rack for Kamilah to dry. “But I can’t keep her blocked off forever without any side effects, even if I can’t help her control it, and I— the block that I have on her now is already twice as strong as the one Rheya wove throughout Gaius’ mind. That is how hard these abilities are fighting to make themselves known.”

She swallowed thickly. “And scientifically speaking...”

“I have a thousand different puzzle pieces I’m working with at the minute but I can’t figure out how to make them fit— that’s the problem with becoming too immersed in what people like to call magic: it is thinking it is always superior to everything and learning only contempt for something as straightforward as science. I myself am guilty of it.”

She glanced through to the formal dining room that had been turned into a makeshift Raines Corp laboratory. Every inch of Adrian’s mahogany wood table was covered in test tubes and microscopes and god only knew what else. “I wouldn’t call any of that straightforward.”

Anastasia laughed softly. “In my experience, the most staunchly held views are based on ignorance or accepted dogma, not carefully considered accumulations of facts. The more you expose the intricacies and realtities of the situation, the less clear-cut things become... but also the more straightforward in a really weird way. Science has an answer for everything, babe... even things that psychic abilities do not. The trick is just finding out where initiative ends and rocket-propelled idiocy begins— it is all knowing what to start with. If you start in the right place and follow all the steps, you will get to the right end.”

Kamilah moved behind her and wrapped her arms tightly around her waist, then pressed a kiss against her shoulder. She fit there perfectly, she thought, snug, small enough that she could feel like she was protecting her from everything bad in the world just by holding her this way. Anastasia sighed and one of her arms reached back to caress her head whilst the other rested over her forearms. Then the Bloodkeeper turned her head to kiss her cheek as they listened to the light rain shower batter on the roof. 

“Not that I am missing Lily Spencer or anything,” she breathed, “but I feel like she would call you a nerd right at this very moment.”

“She did when she called to tell me about how their work in the city was going.”

“Serafine informed me she’s beginning to suspect The Five may be behind creating the Ferals in the first place. An enforcer who works with Nakamura Enterprises was found wandering The Battery last night without the council’s authorisation to be in Manhattan at all.” She sighed. “The fool wasted a perfectly good pair of YSL stilettos as a makeshift stake after retracting information from him.”

Anastasia’s muscles tensed. “Kano wouldn’t betray me—“

“He may not know—“

“He knows everything that goes on in Japan. If Aiko is behind this because she’s still pushing for vampires to reign supreme over mortals and other supernatural communities then she won’t be doing it from Tokyo... she’s smart enough to know he’d be able to read her there.” She wriggled out of her hold and wandered over to the couch. “Will you make sure you have blood at the ready—“

“You’re not really attempting to read Aiko’s mind from the back of beyond in Bumfuck, New York when we don’t know where in the world she is— Annie, even you have your limits!”

“I have to know if she’s the one endangering the entire community, then we can figure out how exactly we should proceed—“

“If she is, we slaughter everyone she holds dear—“

“Kami.” The affectionate nickname was a soft warning. An urge to pause. A reminder that her first thoughts in situations like this one were usually the things she’d been conditioned into thinking for over two thousand years. Gaius’ thoughts. Gaius’ approach to discipline. Not what she actually would choose to do. Nor what she would actually want to do now that she had that choice. “Resentment is a waste of energy,” Anastasia said, “and petty revenge is a waste of living. If it is her she will face retribution but if it’s not... then that’s the end of it. Okay?”

She sighed and nodded. “Carry on— just please stop before you give yourself a seizure. You’re already pushing yourself to your psychic limits to help Zahra... and then you’re also working on your daylight rings as a hobby. Your mind must be tired.”

Anastasia smiled as a means confirming that her mind was, indeed, very tied. Then she closed her eyes to begin her meditation. “If the kids come in don’t let them draw me out of my trance. It won’t be easy to slip back into it without a good long sleep.”

She made her way over to the fridge and pulled out a bag of B-Positive, then hurried back to the living area to find Anastasia sat in the centre of a translucent aura of power on the couch. Her abilities rolled off her skin in waves and made the air around her shimmer, as if the room filled with that familiar staticky feeling.

“So much for not pushing yourself,” Kamilah muttered below her breath.

“We found a really cool boulder you guys have to come see!,” Jax bellowed as he and Zahra barged through the front door like a heard of elephants. How two children under four feet tall could make that much noise, she just didn’t know. She’d tore enemies to shreds on battlefields quieter than this.

“It’s like Mount Everest!”

“Shhhh,” she hissed, gesturing to Anastasia.

“What’s mommy doing?,” Zahra asked.

“She’s trying to read somebody’s mind,” she replied quietly. “So we all have to be very quiet so she can focus.”

“Indoor voices?,” Jax whispered.

“Indeed.” She smiled as she wiped spaghetti sauce from the corners of his lips with her thumb. “Indoor voices would be most appreciated.”

“Once she’s done will you both come see our rock?,” Zahra prodded.

“Of course.”

Both children sat cross legged on the floor with their backs to the lit fireplace and watched Anastasia with rapt attention. She heard murmurings from both about how they wanted to learn how to do exactly what their mother was doing and she had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. The mere idea of living with three psychics of this caliber would drive a saint to madness, she was sure.

Whilst Anastasia was still very young by vampire standards, at moments like this it was almost baffling to believe she wasn’t one of the ancients. Her level of intuition, gift of glamour, strength, and speed was unparalled by any other supernatural creature in the world. The only ones who had ever foolishly believed they’d had more power than the Bloodkeeper were Rheya and Gaius... but neither of them had known the Bloodkeeper’s level of power also gave her the ability to evade and/or harm anyone she chose to by stealth. 

She could peer into and unhinge any mind she chose to from a distance, so long as she was in a good physical condition. Though it taxed her a great deal to do so and she never did it unless it was necessary. Skills were skills; the same way tools were tools. How they were used defined the user, not the tools themselves.

Anastasia emerged from her trance with a rasped gasp for air and Kamilah surged forward to catch her before she could collapse face first onto the floor.

“You’re alright,” she soothed whilst laying her down on the couch in the recovery position incase her psychic gymnastics had made her nauseous. “I’ve got you...”

“They’re trying to provoke me into a reaction,” Anastasia mumbled breathlessly before taking a long sip of her blood bag. She was almost completely incoherent. “They’re trying to demonise us all so the mortals will attack... then my hand will be forced— they want to see what I can do—“

“Who?,” she prodded. “Annie, who is trying to start a war between us and the mortals?”

“Aiko and Henry—“

“That spineless sap of a man couldn’t fight a war if his life depended upon it.”

“The weakest are always the cruelest, in the end.” Anastasia shook her head and tried to sit up, only to have her shoulders gently pushed back down. “That’s the whole point... they won’t be the ones fighting it. I will be. They’re hiding out together — I couldn’t see exactly where — and creating Ferals with the idea that they’ll harm mortals in the city, we’ll take the heat for it, and things will become so bad that I’ll have to retaliate to protect the clans.”

“And your research—“

“They don’t know about it.” Anastasia rubbed wearily at her red-rimmed eyes. “I need to contact the mayor and the council— possibly even the president— the other members of The Five—“

“Adrian is our go-between with the mortal politicians, I will delegate that task to him while you rest and we will hold a council meeting on Zoom once you’re suitably rested,” she interjected, her face settling into a look that left no room for arguments despite how proud she was that she was already formulating a plan of action. In her experience, true leaders like her seldom had or needed the flamboyant titles mortals liked to decorate themselves with.

Anastasia pouted. “Kami—“

“Mama’s right,” Jax said. “You look sleepy.”

“You look like shit,” Zahra confirmed.

Kamilah cleared her throat loudly and cast their daughter a withering glance as both children started laughing. They did their best to mould their children into respectable individuals with some general guidelines to govern their behaviour: be polite, be pleasant, be brief. When even that was too much to manage and their tempers threatened to get the better of them, she had told them to pick a quiet corner and look at everyone like they were the greatest of disappointments as opposed to saying something they’d regret in anger. They had to obey them but they were encouraged to ask questions and discuss rules they felt were unjust, they had to be respectful to their elders but only once their elders had first earned their respect, ignore or indulge those below them in the hierarchy of Clan Sayeed as they saw fit, and they had to always be generous to staff and tradesmen. One loyal staff member was worth the bounty of ten kings, after all.

For the most part they were very well behaved. Their teachers commented on the fact that there was never a request uttered without the worlds ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. However... the swearing. The damn swearing would be the death of her.

“Language,” she sighed. “Just because your Auntie Lily is incapable of stringing a sentence together without a curse word does not mean you two ought to be the same.”

“Sorry,” their daughter giggled. “But she does.”

She sighed and caught Anastasia’s gaze. “It’s three against one.”

“It will never cease to amaze me the way you simultaneously have no patience for people but love to help them,” Anastasia laughed.

“Yes, yes, I'm so bad with people I can't even win an argument with myself most days. But what can I say, I would like to be a happily married woman without having to kill incompetent imbeciles in the process— we have been here so long my blades are all freshly polished to perfection and bloodying them once again is going to be a vulgar experience, and I try hard not to be vulgar."

"Merely improper," Anastasia replied.

She nodded. "Precisely. Which is why I will not complain if you give me the honour of stabbing this bitch in the eyes—“

“Oooh, mommy! Mama said bitch!,” Jax gasped.

“Language!,” Zahra smirked in her best imitation of her.

“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Anastasia nodded as she playfully flicked her on the end of the nose. “Language, mama!”

“You three just love tormenting me, don’t you?,” she huffed, a smile twitching at her lips as she buried her face in Anastasia’s shoulder and both children promptly took it upon themselves to jump on top of them.

“I think we should get a new cat every time you say bitch, Mama,” Jax said.

“Oh, dear me, no.” She feigned a sigh, realising she was thoroughly sandwiched between her wife and both of their five year olds... there was certainly worse places to be. “Then I should be known as that ancient vampire with all the cats... and what a travesty that would be.”

~~~~ five years earlier ~~~~

“Are you really using your abilities to shave your legs?,” Kamilah said as a means of announcing her presence as she stood in the bathroom doorway.

The bathroom smelled like sugar cookies as she walked through the door and leaned against the marble counter, though it was anyone's guess whether the pregnancy had called for actual cookies to be involved at some point or if it was just the candles Serafine had bought them that were made of lies and disappointment.

Her brow furrowed as she watched as her wife tried to do... whatever the hell it was she was trying to do in the shower. A razor blade, shower pouf, and a bottle of Molton Brown’s jasmine and sun rose shower gel were all floating midair as Anastasia tried and failed to peer over her swollen belly to see what she was doing.

She was five foot one and three quarters of an inch tall and heavily pregnant with twins. So her endeavour was obviously was not going well in the slightest.

In fact, it looked like a labour inducing accident waiting to happen.

“Amongst other things but it’s... yeah, it’s harder than it looks.”

“Need a hand?” She began stripping out of her comfy clothes before Anastasia even had a chance to answer. 

“I am entirely capable—“

"Of what, waddling up to someone and ruthlessly bumping into them?”

Anastasia started laughing and eventually nodded her head. “I’d usually jump at the chance to have you on your knees for me but the fact that I can’t bend over to shave for myself sucks. I feel like I’m the size of a house and because I’m still skinny everywhere else I just look like a cartoon character.”

“You,” she said as she climbed into the shower and drew her into a kiss, “are radiant.”

“I definitely don’t feel it right now.”

“Well you are,” she murmured against her lips. “You’re so beautiful I want to hoard you and never share you with anyone again. I would shape my entire life around your every want and desire, around pleasing you and satisfying you, keeping you where I am not just the centre of your world but all of it.”

“Kami...”

One of the infants kicked in response, and Kamilah’s hand twitched at the sensation.

“Active little pup, isn’t he?,” she murmured.

“She,” Anastasia laughed. “My money is on our girl beating the shit out of me on a regular basis.”

It was a long-standing debate between them. Which child was it that was already having trouble behaving themselves and making Anastasia have to pee every ten minutes by kicking her bladder repeatedly?

“Boy,” replied Kamilah. “Any child as difficult as this one has been from the start must, perforce, be our son.”

Anastasia snorted. “As if our daughter would be calm and biddable.”

She grinned, catching one of her hands and bringing it in for a kiss, all warm breaths and soft lips. “Very good point, my love. Very good point, indeed— and I was serious about what I said before, you know. You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. You’re glowing.”

“It’s all the sex we’ve been having.”

At that she snorted.

When Adrian had told her what she should expect as the pregnancy progressed she hadn’t believed him when he told her that at the very end of the second trimester and beginning of the third trimester the hormones tended to make women either loathe sex or want it all the time. There was no in between, apparently... and she knew now that there wasn’t.

She just might die from getting laid so much.

And it was wonderful.

“I’m sure all the sex only increases the glowing,” she said as she sank to her knees at Anastasia feet and picked up the shower gel. “We’ve been having so much that even I’ve noticed a glow on my face.”

“The hormones are crazy.”

She hummed softly and began soaping up her right leg. “Who knew that watching me garden was that much of an aphrodisiac?”

“It’s the tongue thing you do when you’re concentrating really hard.”

“The tongue thing?”

“You stick the tip of your tongue between your lips— just don’t do it now because I will get immediately horny.”

“Well I’m in the perfect position to remedy that, should it occur.”

Anastasia giggled. She was pleased Kamilah still thought her attractive, despite what she often referred to as her beached-whale state, but she was finding it increasingly awkward to accommodate her because there was only a handful of positions they could do comfortably. Her spirit was more than willing but her flesh was swollen. Still, she enjoyed the compliment and understood that there was no real demand behind the constant caresses, that Kamilah would follow her lead. 

Kamilah knew her well enough to realise she valued her desire almost as much as her love. After months of feeling uncomfortable in her own skin, Anastasia was still assured that the ancient vampire genuinely did want her, even if they could do none of the more taboo things they were both craving at present. The Bloodkeeper also understood that she was expressing her conjugal interest partly out of knowledge of her own need for such assurances. A vampire and a buffoon at times, Kamilah was, but she was wonderfully caring once she'd blundered into the way of it. 

“Don’t say stuff like that. You’re already kneeling at my feet, basically feeling me up, and you don’t know how hard I’m working not to get horny— I’m exhausted and uncomfortable... but I’m also always horny. Do you know what that’s like?”

She did not know what that was like but she hummed in agreement, regardless. Telling a hormonal lady that her complex and constantly shifting emotions were not entirely understood on a soul-deep personal level would not end well. 

On the whole Kamilah had found helping her beloved through the pregnancy relatively manageable, up to a point. That point having been some three days ago, at which juncture her wife’s mood swings had started reaching a new stratosphere. Only the day before she had ended a breakfast with Lily sobbing over the fried eggs because they looked at her funny. The whole family had spent a good half hour trying to find a way to pacify her... and poor Lily had been so worried she had started crying herself, which had only made Anastasia cry harder and Adrian had gotten so frazzled he’d binge ate fifteen mini blueberry muffins as a coping mechanism.

At this point, she really needed to be taken care of and treated with the utmost gentleness... as she simply wasn’t herself at all. She was as uncomfortable as she was tired, and horny, and very prone to irrational mood swings. 

“You know, I’ve never actually done this for anybody else before,” she commented as she focused every ounce of her attention on not accidentally cutting her.

“I broke my left arm in three places and my hand in two when I was a mortal on a night out with Lily when we somehow ended up partying in Hoboken and I couldn’t figure out how to shave my legs with my right hand without basically bleeding to death in the shower. So, fun fact, she’s actually shaved my legs before.”

“You mean to tell me you used to shower with Lily in that tiny shower in your old apartment?” She didn’t even try to hide her amusement. “There was barely enough room for one person to stand up in that thing... her face must’ve been right in your—“

“She writes all my birthday cards to ‘Princess Pornstar Pussy’ for a reason.”

“That’s incestuous— didn’t you wear swimsuits?”

“I got hurt doing a dare she assigned me and she felt so guilty about it that she helped me pay my medical bills. We were so broke trying make rent after that, even after selling basically all of our clothes on Depop, that we didn’t own swimsuits and the fabric of cheap panties from H&M when they get wet makes you so itchy it just wasn’t worth it,” Anastasia laughed. “But it really cemented our friendship, I’ll say that much.”

“I admit, I always wondered how Lily knew you have a very attractive— I’m not going to kill any brain cells by calling it that.” She smirked up at her as she dragged the razor over her left thigh. “But I always just put it down to the fact the two of you have literally no boundaries with each other and frequently waltzed into each other’s bedroom to borrow clothes whilst completely in the nude— at the beginning I was dumbfounded that there was no sexual attraction between you... you were just that comfortable with each other!”

“Remember the time she got a vajazzle and decided she needed our opinion at, like, 4am—“

“And I told her it posed a choking hazard to Melanie. Yes, indeed, the moment will haunt me for the rest of my life. I could’ve happily lived another two thousand years without Lily Spencer waking me up at such an ungodly hour after a transatlantic flight to look at her bedazzled genitals.”

They both started laughing at the memory and Kamilah rested her forehead against her wife’s thigh. They’d made so many ridiculous memories in that grimy little East Village apartment that Anastasia and Lily had lived on dollar pizza slices in order to afford. And though she would never admit it to anybody but her wife, she treasured the times that they’d spent there.

For the first time ever, she’d lived a normal life. When they’d been there she hadn’t been royalty or anybody’s puppet, she hadn’t been a CEO or a clan leader... all she’d had to be was herself... and she’d always found that very nice. In that apartment she’d formed friendships and developed the strongest love she’d ever experienced. She’d tried mortal foods, had been introduced to many new songs and movies, and had even played some video games— she’d found herself again for the first time in more than two thousand years within those four walls.

“There,” she beamed, running her hands over Anastasia’s smooth skin. “Everything below the belly has been thoroughly taken care of and I didn’t draw one single drop of blood.”

Anastasia took her hand to try to help her to her feet, paying no regard to the fact her centre of gravity was widely skewed and she could barely keep herself standing upright. However, she accepted the gesture but pushed herself up and didn’t pull on her at all.

“Thank you, Kami,” Anastasia murmured against her lips. “You’re a lifesaver.”

“My work isn’t done yet,” she smirked as she turned off the water and helped steady her on the way out to be absolutely sure she wouldn’t slip on the tiles. “You’re also going to need help drying off and putting on body butter.”

“I’m going to start crying in a minute— you’re so good to me, love.”

“You’re the one doing all of the heavy lifting,” she grabbed one of the fluffy white towels from the heated towel rail and wrapped it around herself before grabbing the other and starting to help Anastasia dry herself, “I’m just making sure I carry as much of the weight as I physically can to make it as easy on you as it is possible for it to be. I don’t ever want you to feel like you’re doing this alone.”

“There’s no chance of that happening. You’ve been the most supportive wife this whole time.”

It made her feel good to know that.

Having suffered more than her fair share of loneliness in her long life, the last thing she wanted was her wife to ever feel she was without a supportive partner in everything she did — and even more so at a time like this. It seemed more important than ever that she ensured both her emotional and physical needs were being vigilantly tended to. And she often found herself far too amused when Anastasia would still do the very same for her in turn. Like the moment amidst a hormonal flood of tears sparked by watching Marley & Me she realised she hadn’t consumed an adequate amount of water and gotten up from the couch to save her from dehydration with a bottle of Voss, all with the tears still pouring down her cheeks.

They’d both read horror stories on Reddit’s popular AITA threads, where pregnant mortals and their partners shared horrendous situations they’d found themselves in that a sane individual would rectify with an immediate divorce. From the husband who’d gone on a golfing retreat three days before his wife’s due date and missed the birth of his son, and somehow didn’t think he was in the wrong. To the woman whose husband had been balls deep in his nineteen year old mistress as her waters broke and was thinking about forgiving him. And the pregnant woman who’d banned her boyfriend from eating a healthy portion of food around her and demanded he indulge in all of her cravings, despite the fact he was a recovering bulimic. Then there was the husband who monitored his wife’s calorie intake so closely he had refused to speak to her for days after indulging in her cravings. Or even the lesbian couple who’d got into an argument so heated that knives had been thrown, all because they couldn’t decide between naming their kid Gandalf or Aslan. 

She was thankful she and Anastasia were both much too sane to run into even half of these ridiculous mortal domestic issues faced by couples who were obviously unfit to be parents at all.

“We’re going to snuggle in bed and take a nap— this maternity leave business is exhausting,” Kamilah declared as she lifted Anastasia in her arms and headed for the bed.

“I can walk, you know,” Anastasia giggled.

“Where’s the fun in that?”

Kamilah had invested in no less than fourteen different pregnancy pillows the moment they’d found out Anastasia was pregnant and had gone as far as to task interns with testing them all before deciding which ones were worthy of her wife and unborn children. As finding a comfortable position to sleep in was so difficult for Anastasia the huge u-shaped pillow that wrapped around them both and supported her belly came in extraordinarily handy. She could lay behind her in the u-bend and spoon her whilst the Bloodkeeper spooned her side of the pillow and they’d both be asleep in minutes. Between the pillow at their weighted blanket it was like curling up in a cosy cocoon every time they climbed into bed.

Silently they lay there, entangled in their little nest. Eventually Anastasia moved; to Kamilah’s delight she brought her hand to her lips and kissed each one of her fingers, and she snuggled her face into the nape of her neck. 

"Annie?,” she murmured sleepily. Without thinking, she weaved her hands in her freshly washed hair and watched as the silky ginger strands slowly fell through the V's between her fingers.

“Mhm?"

"Tell me again the words you told me for the first time as we observed that shrine in Japan." 

Anastasia turned her head and guided her into a gentle kiss. It was sweet and perfectly chaste. A kiss that lasted an instant, an eternity, that one precious kiss, and it spoke silent volumes of bewildered honesty.

The moment that followed was too fragile for words.

“I love you so much, Kami.” Anastasia’s voice was so quiet a butterfly wouldn’t have startled at the sound of it and then she added, “We’re very lucky you’re ours.”

Her heart fluttered and the smallest hint of a smile tickled at the corners of her lips as she rested her hand on her belly and felt one of the babies move beneath her palm, and she felt squeezed with a wild infatuation and protectiveness. They were one. Her and her family. Nothing, not even death, could ever change that. 

This was a rare gift, she realised, for another person to see every ugliness in you and still be able to find that part of you that they could love, that could love them back.

And when she spoke her words were little more than a whisper, thick with emotion. “I love you, too.”


	12. it’s okay to be scared.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by; Love You To Death by Chord Overstreet.

“You need to take a break,” Kamilah huffed as she stood in the doorway of Anastasia’s makeshift laboratory and watched as her wife continued to push herself far beyond the brink of exhaustion.

This was a problem that she’d first noticed in Anastasia when she was still mortal: she literally did not know when to stop, or she would simply refuse to stop until her body gave out on her. She was driven by a constant need to prove herself, to better herself, to challenge herself... and the way she obsessed on her goals was more than a little concerning to those that loved her.

“Ten more minutes—“

“You said that an hour ago.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You haven’t eaten all day. I don’t even know when you last drank water. You have to stop.”

“I don’t have to do anything. You don’t get to tell me what to do right now,” Anastasia snapped in her exhaustion. “I’m perfectly fine.”

She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, then looked up to study her utterly exhausted looking wife hunched over a microscope and making notes about whatever it was she was observing. Kamilah knew her well enough to know that a mental breakdown was probably long overdue.

She didn’t even know what she did with all that equipment. Only that she used it to make the illogical logical. She found the reason in everything that reason could not explain.

The Bloodkeeper hadn’t been herself all night after a particularly horrendous time with nightmares when she’d tried to sleep. Since the sun had set she had trained psychically with Zahra and Jax, then sparred with her. She’d dealt with The Council and The Five. She’d worked for hours in her lab examining Zahra’s blood samples, and examining sap from The Tree Of Death that had been congealed on the blade she’d used to kill Rheya... looking for similarities in their makeup. She’d scoured Demetrius’ and Rheya’s memories for any hints that may give light to how Zahra’s abilities would develop or how she could help her control them. Then she’d tried to track Aiko and Henry again— only to find herself so mentally exhausted she couldn’t do it... but unlike then resting like a sane individual once the children were in bed, she wound up straight back in the lab doing whatever the hell it was she was now doing.

“Annie,” she said firmly enough to draw her attention as she saw her beginning to get visibly frustrated with whatever it was she was seeing in the microscope, “you scared the shit out of me last night when you woke up screaming and you have been exhausted all day, so forgive me if I don't want to hear you say you’re fine."

Anastasia rubbed her eyes, as if hoping it would keep the burning tears away. But the thought of everything happening in Manhattan and not being able to leave Zahra’s side to tend to it herself brought them straight back. It wasn’t yet safe to return to the city with their daughter as there were so many people her abilities could potentially harm, which meant that the clans and the council were in charge of disposing of Ferals and trying to capture Aiko and Henry.

“What do you want to hear?,” Anastasia snapped. “That I'm exhausted? Terrified? Confused? That all I want to do is rest my head on your chest and sleep for hours, but that's not going to happen because every time I close my eyes I’m either being murdered by Gaius, or having Jax die in my arms, or am having every ounce of Rheya’s power surge into me and turn me into a monster? Then all I can think is that you’ll eventually leave me because I’m driving myself insane and—“

“Yes," she said quickly, then just as quick said, "No. Everything but the last part." She paused and then walked straight to her side and leaned against the dining room table that was so swamped with scientific equipment and papers that the wood of it couldn’t be seen. "Annie, how could you think I would leave you? How can you doubt how I feel?"

“Because," Anastasia whimpered as she slumped against the table, her shoulder curling in as she wrapped her arms around herself. 

They’d been here a thousand times before when her PTSD made itself known and that became all she could see. Kamilah often had to remind herself that it wasn’t her talking, it was the anxiety rearing it’s ugly head, and she took a moment to simply breathe as she felt the familiar twisting in her stomach. 

How she hated to see her in so much pain.

How she hated being unable to take it away— but the simple truth was, that no matter how much she loved her, she simply could not love away her mental illness.

“You saw me lose it. You saw me almost go insane with the memories— I woke up screaming and so disoriented I almost threw you through the wall.”

The slight muscles in her shoulders visibly tensed, the tendons sharpening in her neck as she physically shuddered. 

“I watched you battle against the worst memories of your life and I watched you win. Make no mistake, my love. I battled right beside you. You need to find some trust in me... in us.” She gently tilted her teary face up so she was looking her in the eyes. “I am never leaving you, do you understand me? No matter how bad it gets.”

“I— logically I know that but my mind, it— When I get like this all I can see is the bad and I don’t know how to make it stop... because it never stops.” She wiped roughly at her eyes. “And it’s not just my trauma, it’s everybody’s trauma. People I’ve never even met. I have their memories and I feel what they felt— and I pretend that I’m fine but it never stops.”

She inhaled and slowly let the air out. Her stance softened and so did her voice and she drew her into her embrace. 

“If you're scared, tell me. If you need to cry and scream, then do it. And you sure as hell don't even think about walking away from us because you think it would be better for me. Here's the reality, Annie: I want to be by your side. If you want to go to walk down the street stark naked so you can show the world your scars, then let me hold your hand. If you want to just fall off the face of the Earth and leave everything but the kids and I behind, then tell me that, too. I may not always understand, but damn it, baby, I'll try.”

Anastasia’s arms tightened around her waist. “I’m just— I’m so fucking tired, Kami, and I feel next to useless.”

She pressed a kiss to her hair and prodded, “Useless?”

“I could stop this thing with Aiko and Henry in seconds if I could go back to Manhattan but it’s just not safe for me to leave Zahra and we can’t take her either— and I’m so exhausted I can’t even figure out their exact location.” She sighed and nuzzled her damp face into the crook of her shoulder. “I’m supposed to be the leader of this community but what am I really contributing right now?”

“Leadership. Peace of mind. A continuation of the peace between our society and the mortals, however shaky it may be at the present moment.” She cupped the back of her head in her palm and held her face against her neck as she cried. “Do not underestimate the strength it takes to be the hearth everyone turns to for warmth. You fight for our kind, for our people so they have freedom to make choices. You’re doing far more than you realise— but you will not be able to continue if you keep working yourself to the bone like this.”

“I don’t have another option,” Anastasia said as she looked up at her. “With each and every emotional meltdown, Zahra’s blood is becoming more and more similar to the sap from the Tree Of Death.”

“How is that possible?,” she whispered.

Anastasia shrugged in absolute bewilderment. “Even Jax’s blood is becoming so similar to Rheya’s. Granted, we only have a tiny sample of hers and he’s not going to develop any sort of toxicity... but his powers are still growing.”

“Growing as in—“

“They’re both equally as powerful as me, Kami,” The Bloodkeeper deadpanned. “They may not be able to see into the past the way I can but they can do everything else I can— today they both started talking about ending this fight between the council, Aiko, and Henry by themselves.”

She swallowed thickly and her blood ran cold at the thought. “I— could they?”

Anastasia nodded. “Without a doubt. I know we said we’d never involve them in politics but if I can’t help Zahra get her abilities under control and reel in the toxicity related to her emotions with enough time to recover my own psychic strength before things in Manhattan descend into an all out war... we may need them— and it... it may be meant to happen that way.”

She framed her face in her palms. “Meant to happen that way?”

She hoped Anastasia was wrong, but she had a bad feeling, that nagging one that always told her when her wife was right... that one that sensed darkness lurking upon the horizon. She didn't like knowing, but that radar had saved not only her, but the ones she loved on more than one occasion.

“Today I was showing them how to look into people’s minds from a distance and they chose Kano. So we looked into his mind because he always finds it amusing when I ‘pop in to say hello’... and we— I don’t know if it was a prophecy or— we heard... something.” She paused for a moment and then said, “Shadow and dust shall be reclaimed, earth sealing the tomb from which you came. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, warrior return, breathe your last. Air, earth, fire, water, hear my voice, obey my order, thrice around your grave do bound, evil sink into the ground. I now invoke the law of three, this is my will, so mote it be.”

“The law of three?,” she echoed.

“Rheya, Demetrius, and I were the cornerstones of vampire society. She was life. He was death. And the Bloodkeepers have always been the history interwoven between the two,” Anastasia said quietly. “We thrived off of each other. Our powers thrived off of each other’s.”

“So you’re saying that history is repeating itself?”

“In a way— you know what? We need to sit down if I’m going to try to explain this.”

Kamilah nodded and with that they made their way to the living room and sat down on the couch. She sat with her hands in her lap, because she knew that sometimes when people spoke, it wasn't because they necessarily needed someone to speak back. It was because they had a powerful need for someone to listen.

“The number three has always been symbolic with power in vampire society,” Anastasia began. “Think about it, we’ve always had three people at the top of the food chain. Rheya, Gaius, and Xenocrates. Gaius, Adrian, and you. Then when Gaius came back before we had discovered Demetrius, the most powerful was him, me, and Rheya. Then Rheya, Demetrius, and I.”

She nodded. “And it’s only really been you since Rheya’s death, since you’re that much more powerful than us all.”

“Exactly.” The Bloodkeeper sighed. “I don’t know if you’re familiar with the symbolic nature of different numbers in terms of spirituality—“

“Is anybody but you?,” she lightly teased.

“I— probably not. I’m a nerd, I know.” Anastasia let out a soft laugh and continued, “I’ve done my research into the number three and since long ago it has been associated with communication, creativity, and optimism— and to the priestesses of Phampira in ancient Greece it was also a ritualistic number that was symbolic of protection and guidance from divine forces— and in basically every religion it holds some sort of significance—“

“It... does?”

Anastasia nodded eagerly. “Off the top of my head in Christianity, for example, the threefold office of Christ is the religious doctrine that says Christ performs the duty of prophet, priest, and king. The Magi gave Jesus three gifts. Paul the apostle went blind for three days. During the Agony in the Garden Christ asks three times for the cup to be taken from him— In Judaism there are three shabbat meals, three daily prayers, converts are traditionally turned away three times to test their sincerity— in Norse Mythology it was said that before Ragnarök there would be three hard winters without an intervening summer, Bor had three sons, Odin endured three hardships. There is the Wiccan rule of three. Cronus was said to have three sons; Poseidon, Zeus, and Hades—“

“Three was a significant number in Egypt, too,” she breathed.

“It was?”

“It was the symbol of plurality. Triads of deities were used in religion to signify a complete system— the god Atum, for example, was said to have been one and became three.” She sighed. “But I— I’m still not quite sure what you’re getting at...”

“What if their abilities signifies another transitional period for our society?,” Anastasia asked. “One where it will not just be me who is responsible for keeping everything in balance? We once again have the power of the first vampire presenting itself in Jax, the first feral presenting itself in Zahra, and me being the first vampire Bloodkeeper— Kami, my gut is telling me that we will have a chance to correct Rheya’s mistakes—“

“Is that not what you’ve been doing this whole time?”

“As much as one person can,” Anastasia said. “But I mean, really correct her mistakes. Do what she could’ve done. Do what Demetrius could have done if they’d been able to control his toxicity. All of us, together— This is bigger than just me and I don’t think we really have a say in it. Like, if it is our destiny to be hit by a train, we will be hit by the train no matter what. The only thing a person can change is how the train turns them into a hamburger, you know?”

She leaned in and kissed her brow. “If anybody else had said half of that in my presence my blades would’ve been embedded in their neck by now, you know.”

“I know,” Anastasia huffed. “But Kano told me once that there is a connective thread in everything that happens in someone’s life. Those things that you never can anticipate, is it all chance or the product of some grand cosmic design? It’s crazy—“

“That’s why I trust it,” she sighed. “What was it you added to the daylight rings to control the electromagnetism? You don’t happen to have anything that will calm me the hell down and block any negative energy around me without resorting to draining what little wine reserves we have left here, do you?”

The Bloodkeeper’s eyes widened and with that, the last of her odd sadness broke apart as she laughed.

And there it was, that moment, with happiness dancing in her aquamarine gaze and the air around her effervescent with her Power — that moment was what the ancient vampire would do anything and kill anyone for.

That moment was what she lived for.

That one, and then the one after that, and the one after that, all grouped together in her mind like luminous pearls on a delicate string. Each one came to her anew, a perpetual gift of joyful surprise, and as rich as she was, and as many jewels as she’d acquired in her life, those moments were the sum total of her true treasure.

“Holy shit— Kamilah!”

“What?”

“You really are a genius! You just say these things and— babe!”

Her brow furrowed and the smuggest smile spread across her face. “I’m told I’m quite the scientist?”

“I’ve been trying to control the toxicity in Zahra’s abilities mostly psychically but what if they can be blocked the same way I’m controlling the EMF on the daylight rings?!,” Anastasia practically shrieked with excitement. “Witches use precious stones in their spells all the time for different reasons, but what if I can harness their natural abilities to act as a channel for Zahra’s powers?”

“Um—“

“They use Lapis Lazuili to treat depression and lift spirits— but Obsidian is used to draw toxins away from the body, so maybe that could be used as some sort of a filter— Opal is also used in spiritual and emotional healing— uh— um— but Agate is also used in matters regarding mental health and emotional regulation—“

“Annie,” she interjected with a laugh before silencing her with a kiss before she could begin explaining the chemical compositions of such stones. Dragging her lips from hers, she buried her face in her neck. Her arms tightened around her almost to the point of pain. “My love. Breathe.”

Anastasia’s cheeks flushed red. The woman was so excited she was practically shaking. She seemed so focused on bringing the ideas in her head to fruition that she was almost completely consumed by it as the shards of the approaching dawn shining through the windows of the cabin danced to the tune of the thoughts whizzing inside her head, much like the colours and patterns in a kaleidoscope.

She couldn’t help but smile, despite the fact she hadn’t the faintest idea what Anastasia was rambling about. One moment she was talking about numbers and the next precious stones and then... was she now talking about Albert Einstein or Nikola Tesla? She hadn’t a clue... but she smiled and pretended she knew exactly what she track she was on, because what was life without this rapt fascination? Without this curiosity? She, for one, would have hated to think that people knew everything that there was to know, that they’d discovered all that there was to be discovered in the world. Otherwise, what even was the point of living?

“There’s so much to do! The sooner I figure out which stones work, the sooner we can get back to Manhattan and—“

“What have I done?,” she chuckled. She was unable to resist face palming as her wife rambled on and on, and threw scientific terms around with words that had to be at least twenty letters long. “You’re not going to sleep for days, are you?”

“You can be my assistant!,” Anastasia beamed as she stood and began dragging her back to the laboratory by the hand. “There are so many equations that I have to do and—“

“A night of mathematics?,” she groaned. “Only you could be excited about a night of doing equations.”

“I’ll take my top off if it would make it more exciting for you?”

She let out a choked laugh and gave her a playful spank. “Not even staring at your breasts could make math problems seem exciting to me— but I certainly would not complain if you wished to give me a little something to ogle.”

“Pervert.”

A smirk twitched at the corners of her lips. “But I’m your pervert.”

Anastasia pulled her T-shirt over her head and undid her black bra with one swift movement, and Kamilah’s throat went dry. “Now,” Anastasia said, casting her a knowing smirk as she cracked her knuckles and tied her hair back. “Do you think you can focus enough to write down everything that I tell you while I brainstorm?”

She cleared her throat. “That depends entirely on whether you intend to continue fondling your breasts like that— even my self control has its limits.” She laughed softly. "You have this look on your face of absolute ecstasy and it is not aiding my concentration any." 

“Babe. You can’t use that word. I would only look like that if I was having sex with you. The best kind of sex with lots of metal and leather." 

She laughed again. "I can't help how you look. You do get the same look on your face when I’m coming at you with a riding crop. Do you like science that much?”

Anastasia giggled and her hands fell to her sides, giving her a perfect view of her chest. “I can tell this night is going to be fun.”

~~~~ five years earlier ~~~~

“I’ve got you,” Kamilah soothed as she tentatively rubbed a tennis ball into the small of her wife’s back to ease the pain of the Braxton Hicks pains assaulting her body. 

At thirty-seven weeks pregnant, their doctor had been expecting her to go into labour any day — which wasn’t necessarily anything to worry about, as an early delivery with twins was common — and these labour pains had been happening sporadically multiple times a day for close to a week. On this day, however, things seemed to be following a more predictable pattern... which, deep down, Kamilah knew only meant one thing.

For days Anastasia just hadn’t been herself at all. It reminded Kamilah only too much of when she’d seen her ill as a mortal. The Bloodkeeper couldn’t settle to anything, everyone was getting on her nerves, and when she lay down she wanted to get up but when she was up she wanted to lay down. Nothing was comfortable. No food appealed to her. And she was as grumpy as hell and felt really insecure and worried but when asked the cause, she didn’t know what about. She was also quite tearful a lot of the time.

“That was fifteen minutes apart again and it lasted for thirty-five seconds,” Anastasia panted, looking down at the app on Kamilah’s phone were she was diligently timing each and every pain. “Does that mean I’m in labour?”

“I’m not sure. The doctor said we shouldn’t go to the hospital until they’re six minutes apart and lasting for a minute each, or if your waters break or you start bleeding,” she said as calmly as she possibly could, “so I suppose we shall see if things progress— is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable in the meantime?”

“I, um, I don’t know,” whimpered Anastasia, her hand tightening on hers. “Can you just... stay here?”

Sensing she was frightened, Kamilah drew her immediately into her arms on the couch and began stroking her hair. “I’ll be at your side the whole time,” she murmured into her crown. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Anastasia nodded and her eyes roamed over her face, taking in her normally confident features looking quite concerned. “You’re as scared as me?”

“I—“ She sighed. “Indeed. I find myself rather anxiously anticipating the next few hours and days.”

Her face twitched into what looked like a squinty smile, and in her wordless expression Kamilah saw gratitude, and relief, and trust. She wanted, desperately, not to disappoint her at this time when she needed her most... but it was a frightening thing on her end as well. She found herself ready to separate heads from shoulders any time her wife received even the smallest of injuries in battle and she knew she was going to see her in what would probably be the worst pain in her life— she just had to keep a clear head and continuously remind herself what would come from it.

“We’ll get through it together,” Anastasia breathed whilst smoothing a hand over her swollen belly.

She pressed a kiss to her brow and murmured. “Indeed we will.”

Despite the fact they’d prepared as best anybody possibly could for this, Kamilah still felt woefully unprepared. However, Adrian had told her that he’d felt the very same way when Eleanor began to go into labour and that brought her a great deal of comfort. Her brother was so overly prepared for everything that if he even felt this way... well... perhaps it was the norm.

Before the days of contraction timing apps and modern medicine, childbirth was possibly the most terrifying thing a woman could do in her life. She recalled Cleopatra telling her when she was pregnant that one was literally looking death in the face when they went ahead with it. Men died in battle; women died in childbirth, she had said.

Her one consolation was that this couldn’t take her beloved from her. She wouldn’t bleed to death in her arms... again. She wouldn’t contract a deadly infection. She wouldn’t be ripped apart. And they had the guarantee that she would live through it to tell the tale.

“Ah,” Anastasia yelped after fourteen minutes and fifty-five seconds. Every muscle in her body seemed to stiffen and her fist tightened around Kamilah’s wrist as she hit the button on the app. “These— mm— don’t feel like Braxton Hicks—“

“I can see that, my love,” she replied through gritted teeth as she pressed kisses to her knuckles.

Her bones were going to be fractured long before their children made an appearance at this rate.

Bloody hell.

Though the pain in her hands began to pulsate into her wrists, she didn’t complain. Complaining about her hands being squeezed when her wife was quite clearly in the early stages of labour was a cowardly thing to do— in an odd way she was just thankful to be sharing in the burden in this small way.

“Deep breaths,” she murmured.

Anastasia nodded sharply and her grip on her hands briefly tightened before it relaxed just as quickly as it had begun. “That one sucked,” Anastasia concluded as comically as she could, given the situation.

“What does it feel like?”

“Did you ever have period cramps so bad that you felt like everything from your bellybutton to your upper thighs was on fire?”

“A handful of times...”

“Like that but a little worse.”

“They say a bath can help. Would you like me to draw you one?,” she asked, remembering that one annoying chapter in almost every book they’d read. Apparently warm water could help ease the pain of childbirth significantly — though she was highly skeptical — and it’d probably be hours yet before they’d leave for the hospital. A bath seemed the ideal form of relaxation at a time like this.

“I can help—“

“You can help by holding the phone and hitting the app whenever you feel a contraction.” She helped her to her feet and kept a tight hold of her as they started off for their bathroom. “You will give me a heart attack if you so much as move to lift a finger in this state— no wife of mine will slave away running her own bath whilst literally having my children.”

Anastasia snorted. “You could use handcuffs if you want me still that bad.”

“That’s sadistic.”

She made a point of making the water a bit warmer than she normally would, as the mortal writers all said that the warmer the water the better the results tended to be. Under normal circumstances she would’ve been right there in the water with her but resolved to kneeling at her side instead after tying her hair in a bun and helping her settle, just incase anything should occur that required her to act immediately.

The world of birth was a strange thing. Despite being in the place they’d lived together for decades, they’d already stepped across the threshold from the mundane to the sacred. Pregnancy and birth were a space between worlds — a liminal space — a place where they were no longer not parents and not yet parents either. This betwixt and between was sacred space within which powerful and profound events occurred all the time — often uninvited.

How odd it was to think that this was their last few hours of being a family of two.

That this was the very last time it’d just be the two of them in their home.

“We’re sure the bag is packed with everything we need?,” Anastasia prodded. 

“Gummy bears and all,” she confirmed with a nod. She rested her chin on the side of the bathtub, her eyes that peculiar shade of warm gold in the light. When her eyes were that colour, her gaze seemed to burn her name right into the Bloodkeeper’s bones, branding her her’s.

“How many packets are you taking with you?”

She huffed in amusement and traced the thread-like blue veins in her wrist, drawing warm water from the bath over her creamy white skin. “Before I tell you the exact number, just out of curiosity, if it was a multi-digit number how many decades would it take me to live it down?”

“Whatever the number is, that’s how many decades I’ll tease you,” smirked Anastasia.

“Well,” she heaved a dramatic sigh, “the next eighteen hundred years of my life are going to be absolutely splendid. There will be great-great-who-even-knows-how-many-greats grandchildren teasing me about taking so many packets of gummy bears to the hospital before you finally ceasefire.”

Anastasia started laughing. “You are a massive dork.”

“I—“ She cut off immediately as Anastasia’s hand tightened around hers once again, and hit the button on the app.

Mortals. Bloody mortals. Whichever one had the audacity to start the lie about warm water easing the pains of labour was an imbecile deserving of being hung, drawn, and quartered. Because it very clearly did sweet fuck all.

Anastasia let out a whimper of pain that gave way to a drawn out moan and Kamilah leaned over the side of the bath, holding her gaze as she coached her through her breathing. One of her hands was being crushed to the point her fingers began to tingle and the other caressed her damp cheek, keeping her focused and as relaxed as it was possible to be.

“I— I think I need to move,” Anastasia said breathlessly. 

“Out of the bath or—“

“Hands and knees,” she practically sobbed. “I need— ah— tennis ball—“

Without another word she helped manoeuvre her onto her hands and knees in the water and grabbed the trusty tennis ball they’d been told to use in one of their classes — though Kamilah had bought white Chanel ones for the occasion rather than the hideous neon green ones everybody else used... she found the very colour to be offensive.

She rubbed the ball into the bottom of her spine to help ease some of the pressure being applied there from the inside and helped to steady her with the other.

“You’re doing wonderfully,” she soothed.

Anastasia whimpered into the crook of her elbow in response and didn’t even seem like she could form a word even if she’d wanted to.

She kept up her diligence as contraction after contraction hit, and recorded each and every one on their app.

She helped her change positions in the water no less than seven times. 

Then she got her out of the bath. 

Walked her around the apartment. 

Got her back into the bath. 

Then out. 

Then in. 

Then out. 

Went a walk around the garden with her. 

Got her into their bed in the hopes she might sleep, and quickly found out that was wishful thinking. 

Then she helped her back to the couch when laying in bed made her more anxious.

Their each and every action was punctuated by episodes of severe pain, when Anastasia was more vulnerable than Kamilah had ever seen her... but also precious moments that held lots of laughter and quiet whispered conversations. When some of the pain subsided, they could both tell it was biding its time, tapping its foot impatiently just at the edge of her nerves, and waiting to roar back with full vengeance.

They spent many moments simply talking quietly together. Was that what all couples did at a time like this? She wondered. Was it the small things that wove all relationships tighter? Made them stronger? She didn't know, but she loved being with her just like this. Talking softly to her. Getting her reassurance. Giving her the very same.

“Kami,” Anastasia said eventually, sounding worryingly alarmed as they did a lap of the living room. She stopped walking and her eyes practically bulged from her skull.

“What—“

“I— either I’m fucking pissing myself or my waters are breaking...”

Kamilah’s eyes widened. “Now?”

Anastasia nodded. “Now.”

She glanced down at the wooden floor and there was indeed a small puddle of clear liquid gathering on the floor between her legs and continually trickling down her legs.

“Right— ah,” she stammered. “Time to go to the hospital.”

“But what if it’s just pee?,” Anastasia laughed.

“My love,” she snorted, “you have been in active labour for hours. I may not be an expert but I promise you, it’s not urine.”

“Are you sure?”

They both started laughing at the utter ridiculousness of the situation and she pressed a kiss to her temple before quickly grabbing the towel she’d brought from the bathroom to dab her feverish face. She dropped to her knees at her feet and gently wiped both of her legs and then the puddle on the floor.

“I’m sure. Now let’s get you into some clean underwear and get going—“

“I didn’t even give you your push present yet!”

She laughed softly and rose to her feet to take her to the bedroom to change her wet underwear. “I’m not the one pushing anything out—“

“I still got you a push present— or an ‘I’m sorry I fucked up your dominant hand’ present!”

Only her sweet Annie could go from wailing in pain one minute to being this adorable the next. It was witchcraft. It was nothing sort of magic as far as Kamilah was concerned. She was nothing short of magic.

“I haven’t given you yours yet either,” she pointed out. “We’ll give the gifts once the babies are here. Deal?”

Anastasia smiled softly and nodded. “Deal.”

She leaned in and pressed a gentle kiss to her lips, pouring need and passion into her. Pouring something else that felt like far more than love. More than desire. More than dedication. She had been so unfamiliar with that emotion, that at first, she hadn’t been entirely certain what it was that surrounded her and lifted her up. That she now chased after. That she now craved.

She loved knowing she was her woman. Some women needed many to make themselves feel strong. She had always needed one. The only. Now that she had her, she knew why.

Solidarity. 

She was with her. She would be with her through whatever she had to endure. They had that.

“I love you, Kami,” Anastasia sighed happily.

“I love you, too, my darling. More than you know.”


	13. you’ve waited long enough.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by; Magic Works by Jarvis Cocker.

“So these rings let us walk in the sun?,” Jax murmured in disbelief as he inspected the little silver ring that had been fitted onto the middle finger of his left hand. 

They were sat on a picnic blanket in one of the clearings on Adrian’s property recuperating after another — and very successful — training session. Surrounded by yellow, blue, and purple wildflowers and trees that were centuries old... it seemed the perfect place to experience the sun on their skin for the first time together. 

“They do,” Anastasia confirmed as she slid Kamilah’s onto her finger with a kiss on her knuckles. 

“But how come Zahra’s has more sparkles than mine?,” he pouted. “I like sparkles.”

“I know you like sparkles, sweetheart, and you can wear as many sparkles as you want,” said Anastasia. “But the extra jewels on Zahra’s ring are to help keep her abilities in control. Not for any other reason, do you understand?”

“Okay,” he nodded with a full mouth after taking a large bite out of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “This is good peanut butter.”

“So I won’t kill things anymore?,” Zahra prodded as she tried to lick the strawberry jelly from around her lips and only made it look like she was wearing a bright red lipgloss. “I mean, not unless I take my daggers and stab the mortals trying to kill Santa in the eyes for being foolish imbeciles?”

Kamilah snorted as she forced herself to swallow the rancid bite of the sandwich the children had taken it upon themselves to prepare for their picnic. As it turned out, at least half a jar of peanut butter and jelly smeared on slices of crustless white bread cut into the shape of a butterfly was not an appetising meal in the slightest. The peanut butter stuck to the roof of her mouth and made her feel like she hadn’t brushed her teeth in centuries and the strawberry jelly was much too sweet for her tastes. However, as a mother she felt obliged to eat every bite of the first meal her children had ever prepared her with a smile on her face... even if said meal made the list of the ten worst things she’d ever had in her mouth.

“That’s exactly what it means,” Anastasia said softly as she gestured towards the wildflowers all around them. “I haven’t put the blocks back in your mind after training with your ring... and even when you got frustrated nothing withered.”

“So it’s very important that you keep it on at all times,” Kamilah added. “That means that you never allow anybody else to try it on. You never remove it from your finger unless mommy or I tell you to. Yes?”

“Yes, mama,” Zahra said quickly whilst nibbling on a golden Oreo cookie. “But what if on the Dark Solstice a mortal tries to attack Santa and I’m the only one around to help him but I don’t have any daggers? Then I can take it off and send the mean mortal to hell... right?”

At that, Anastasia started laughing so hard she did actually start choking on her peanut butter sandwich for a few seconds.

“I—,” she cleared her throat, “I suppose that is an exceptional set of circumstances in which removing the ring would be alright, so long as you put it back on the moment the mean mortal has been sent... to hell— how did you even hear that saying, might I ask?”

“Auntie Lily says she’s sending mean ass motherfuckers to hell when she’s playing X-box and drinking that grown up soda with the green M on the front that we’re not allowed to taste,” Jax giggled. “I didn’t actually say motherfuckers... or ass. I was just telling you that Auntie Lily is the one who says motherfuckers and ass... but I didn’t say it.”

She cast her wife a withering glance and sighed. Dear old Auntie Lily was the bane of her entire existence.

“Look at the sky,” Anastasia smirked.

They lay down on their blanket and all of their eyes flew upwards towards the sky. How sweet the morning air was. Little clouds floated like pink feathers from some gigantic flamingo against the fading darkness of the endless night in which she had existed in for more than two thousand years. Now the red and orange rim of the rising sun pushed itself over the early morning cloud-bank, bringing tears to her eyes.

“And we really don’t have to go inside?,” Zahra murmured. “Really, really?”

“Really, really,” Anastasia breathed.

Kamilah bit down on her bottom lip and entwined her fingers through Anastasia’s as her heart thundered violently in her chest. How small she felt with petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of nature.

It had been so long since she truly felt the sun on her skin. Since it’d been something to bask in for hours rather than to endure for mere moments at a time.

“Is the sunrise always the colour of arterial blood?,” Jax gasped.

“It’s different everyday,” Kamilah whispered with tears pooling in her eyes to the point the world became a blur. “Your Uncle Lysi used to wake early every morning to soak in the colours, which he’d describe to me over breakfast or in his letters when he wrote from battle. It was his favourite time of day.”

“Can we watch it everyday just like he did now that it can’t hurt us?,” he asked.

Anastasia squeezed her hand tightly as she nodded her head, and when she spoke her voice was tight with emotion. “I’d like that very much, indeed.”

The light leaked from the east above the treetops and stained the dark sky red, marked the scraps of the cloud with stolen gold and neon pink. Underneath it the meadow twisted up the hill and through the trees towards the cabin — a cluster of sharp peaks, ash-black again the wounded heavens. 

The soil beneath them smelled rich and dewy; reminding her of a distant memory of lazy days spent in Egypt running hand in hand with Arsinoë on the banks of The Nile in the earliest days of spring. The only sound in the absolute silence was their breathing, their immortal hearts beating in perfect sync, and the chirping of morning birds nesting in the trees.

It was one of the most profoundly beautiful moments of her life.

She squeezed Anastasia’s hand and lay still, as still as she possibly could be, and listened to the quiet, to the stillness of the morning, absorbing the strange beauty as the sunlight soaked into her skin for the first time in millennia. The subtle warmth of it felt different than she was used to... like it was caressing her rather than boring into her. Like her cells were singing her praises rather than screaming in agony as they burnt alive.

She became all the more aware of her heart beating, pumping blood throughout her body. As she lay there soaking in the sunrise in this meadow, it was more than dreamlike. Accustomed to a world of unending night, the brightness of the dawning day and the colours were a shock to the system, she felt that she had stumbled into another world... and she supposed, she had.

“My hair looks like its made of fire!,” Zahra shrieked with laughter as she whipped her head back and forth like she was an eighties headbanger at a rock concert. Her wild ginger hair was indeed lit up a million different shades of copper and gold in the sunlight and it flew around her head like a shimmering halo as she started to spin in place with her arms outstretched.

Their wild child was always rather comical when she got herself all riled up. Kamilah chuckled at the sight of her, her ancient heart was going a little crazy and all at once she felt very much alive. Maybe this was what she’d remember most about this impromptu trip upstate... the joy, rather than the fear they’d felt upon discovering her abilities.

“I thought the movies were lying when they showed so much green!,” Jax breathed as he soaked in the scenery. “Like special effects or something because grass is usually dark but it’s— it’s so light! And some of the trees are different shades of green!”

“Look at the way the stream is sparkling in the light,” Anastasia pointed out, gesturing towards the thin stream that wound across the middle of the meadow.

Both children’s jaws dropped at the sight of the sun refracting off of the crystal clear water.

“It’s like diamonds!,” Zahra gasped.

“Can we go look closer?,” Jax asked.

“Knock yourselves out,” nodded Anastasia.

The sweet sound of their carefree laughter was carried on the morning breeze as they ran hand and hand through the wildflowers and uncut grass that practically hit their knees— and to think she’d ever considered immortality to be overrated. How glad she was to have lived long enough to experience this moment!

For so long her life had been nothing but the ability to live through the chaotic mess of humanity and not experience a single thing. To eat everything in sight without ever stopping to taste anything at all.

“Are you happy, love?,” Anastasia murmured with a knowing smirk on her face as she propped herself on her chest.

“So happy that there are no words I can think of that will do this feeling justice,” she confessed as her eyes flickered between her beloved and their children playing a little way aways down the hill. “It has been so long since—,” her voice cracked and the rawness of her emotions startled a laugh out of her. “I never thought I’d experience this again and I— I don’t think I realised how much I missed the simple joy of feeling the sun on my skin.”

Anastasia caressed her cheek and did that wonderful thing with her thumb, swiping away tears of joy she hadn’t even realised she’d shed. The moment she leaned in close to kiss her brow, Kamilah found she took her in with every breath she drew. The more she breathed, the more she was aware of her presence. Every cell in her body seemed focused on her. She knew when she took a breath. When she let it out. She breathed with her. In. Out. Together. As if they were exchanging each and every breath they took.

“Look at me,” she whispered, reaching out to touch her hair.

“Hmm?,” Anastasia hummed, leaning into her touch. She responded to her as if born for her— and she was certain she was. More importantly, she had began to think long ago that she had been born for her, too.

If it was even possible, she was somehow even more breathtakingly beautiful in the light of day. Bathed in sunlight. She looked at her as if she could see inside her, past the glacier nobody else could climb, penetrating deep and seeing the woman she very well could have always been capable of being. For whatever reason, she had always looked at her and saw something in her which no one else did — and she needed it. 

She had always needed it.

She’d suffered through enough of bullshit lonely to last her a thousand lifetimes. Of believing she was the devil in heels walking on earth. She might’ve still been a monster in the eyes of some, but to this one woman and the two children now spinning circles around them, she wasn't that. She’d never been that. She’d never be that.

For a long moment Kamilah simply stared at her and traced each one of her familiar features with rapt fascination, losing herself entirely in the oceans of her eyes. She forced air through her lungs and with it, brought in the scent of her. The moment she took her in, her whole world changed. Lightened. She could do that, without doing more than existing.

Their children’s shrieks of delighted laughter and the sound of her wife’s heart beating warmed her when she thought nothing could. They moved something inside her, things she had for so long thought dead or had convinced herself had never actually been there in the first place. They brought out her desire to be better. They chased her demons away.

They were inside her, wrapped around her ancient organs and seeping into the marrow of her battle-worn bones. Her steadily beating heart. Maybe her damn soul, withered and weary as it may have been at times. 

She let herself smile. They were there. They weren’t going anywhere... and everything was going to be okay.

“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” she whispered after a long, long moment. “A single flame to light the darkness— a miracle, that’s what you are.”

~~~~ five years earlier ~~~~

“Deep breaths, my love,” Kamilah soothed as she stood by the side of Anastasia’s hospital bed and stroked her hair and her face, all whilst observing the medical professionals’ every move and listening to every conversation happening in their room. “Slow, deep breaths.”

Perhaps she was being overly precautious, but she was heavily armed and ready for any number of things that anybody could possibly try whilst her wife was in such a vulnerable position. Daggers. Poisons. Smaller daggers. Tools that could be used to bind their enemies. Tools to start a fire, should burning bodies become necessary. She had everything she could possibly need to protect her family and some loyal enforcers from Clan Sayeed guarding the door in the hallway whilst the family sat comfortably in the waiting room— though Anastasia had vehemently drawn the line at allowing her to bring a nine hundred year old short-sword that could have been very easily concealed in their roller bag.

Anastasia lost her steady blowing rhythm and began growling, “Ow, ow, ow, ow, shit, shit, shit!” At the end of the contraction, she fell back against her pillow scowling. “That really hurts!”

“What did they tell us in class?,” she puzzled. “Surely there was something useful—“

“They said that there would be discomfort— which I’m starting to realise is a term everybody likes to use about agony that’s not their own. And that I should visualise my birth canal as a tunnel of golden light.”

“Mortals,” she huffed. “Bloody mortals.”

The OBGYN at the foot of the bed pushed away from the rolling stool where she’d been giving Anastasia an internal examination. “Well! You weren’t kidding about those contractions. You’re already seven centimeters dilated.”

“Visualise my birth canal as an express elevator, more like,” Anastasia muttered below her breath before taking a long suck out of the Nitrous Oxide that was being offered as pain relief. It didn’t seem to be doing much besides making her dizzy, though it was about as good as vampires could get because their bodies tended to heal, expel needles, and metabolise drugs much too quickly for epidurals or intravenous pain medication to be of any real use.

Should the need for a cesarian arise a mask filtering a continuous stream of general anaesthetic gas would be fitted to her face and a team of specially trained surgeons would pile into the operating room. Everybody hoped that wouldn’t happen, as performing such an operation on a vampire was far from easy. The surgeons would have to move at three times the pace they normally would. Somebody would be constantly maintaining the incision whilst somebody else worked. And there would have to be multiple bags of blood ready to be pumped into the sedated vampire via NG tube in order to heal them before they could be moved from the operating room, as stitches wouldn’t do a damn thing.

“How long do you think it will be?,” Kamilah asked, remembering that this was said to be the most painful stage of the delivery. The contractions would last between sixty and ninety seconds and happen every two to three minutes and there could be lots of physical side effects, too.

“The transitional stages of labour between seven and ten centimetres generally lasts anywhere between fifteen minutes and three hours,” their doctor said softly, her dark eyes darting between them both. “But everything looks good, there doesn’t seem to be anything to worry about. All we can do is wait— we’ll come back to check her cervix every ten minutes and you can press the call button if you feel like anything is happening before then.”

Kamilah nodded and murmured a curt thanks before the medical professionals filed out of the room and her enforcers at the door flashed her a sign to say that all was well.

At this point, they were both exhausted. The birthing suite, which Kamilah had been calling The Electronic Bullshit Room — to make her wife laugh — because it was full of all sorts of electronic bullshit they couldn’t fathom but were just glad to have on principle, was a taxing place to be. Mortals scurried in and out of the room constantly. Monitors were always bleeping. Anastasia was sobbing with the pain. The screams and cheers echoing from other rooms rang in their ears, making their heightened senses go crazy.

“Kami,” Anastasia wailed as another contraction began.

“I’m here,” she cooed, sitting herself down on the bed at her side as her hand was squeezed. “I’m right here—“

“I’m never doing this again—“ She cut herself off with a shuddered hiss of pain that became a tortured whimpering noise. 

“You’re doing so good, baby,” she assured her as best she could.

She wasn’t even the one experiencing the pain and she found this torturous.

Never in her life had she seen her wife react this way to anything— not even in her dying mortal moments with a katana protruding from both sides of her body, shattering her ribs, and piercing multiple of her internal organs had she been so incapacitated by pain.

All the classes and books had informed her that at this stage of childbirth, a woman’s behaviour may change. She wouldn’t know what to do. She may become panicked or scared, and nothing helped— the only way out of it was through.

“I can’t—“

“Yes you can,” she said, pressing her brow to hers as she stroked her cheek. “You’re already doing it, darling. I know it’s hard... but you’re doing so well. You’re so close to having our babies.”

Anastasia whimpered and nodded, and Kamilah pressed a kiss to her hairline.

Nobody ever talked honestly about what a struggle this all was in the classes or in the books, she was quickly coming to realise. Yes, it was beautiful. Yes, it was magical in a very macabre way. But it was also the single most horrific thing she’d witnessed in over two thousand years of life.

She could see why so many women used to die in childbirth. They didn't always catch some kind of microbe, or even haemorrhage, or get into physical difficulties. It was clear now that many just gave up. Back in the old days they must have known that if they didn't die this time, they'd be going through it again the next year, and the next, until their bodies were either too ruined to bear it anymore or they finally didn’t survive it.

She could understand how a woman might just stop trying after so many long hours, like a tired swimmer in the middle of a stormy sea. How she might be tempted to let her head go under, to allow the water to fill her lungs. And she found herself wondering how any body could bear this, be it mortal or vampire, how was it even physically possible to tolerate this much stress?

With each passing moment she slowly massaged Anastasia’s neck, her shoulders, her cramping legs. She tucked her under blankets and cuddled her close when she complained of being cold and began to shiver. She fanned her face and fed her chips of ice with a plastic spoon from a styrofoam cup when she complained of being too hot. She wouldn't let her go under. 

Between the contractions a horrifying shriek echoed from the room next door and startled them both. “Mom, I’m sorry!," the woman wailed like she was breathing her last, only to be drowned out by numerous voices urging her on.

“I get it,” Anastasia laughed weakly. “I think I understand why my mother thought I was some sort of demon now— I can’t imagine going through this having lost as many marbles as she had by 1997. I wish I could apologise for being such a bitch to her at times now I know how this feels.”

Kamilah smiled sadly and kissed her hair. She didn't know why she would ever want to apologise to her mother, wretched woman that she had been. The Bloodkeeper had hated her so much she’d hardly even flinched when she died, and had confessed after the funeral that she finally felt free now that the first person who’d ever mistreated her was six feet under. 

After sending her away from Almaty at the age of ten, she’d seen her again in person exactly fifteen times between then and the age of thirty-seven. Each and every time would trigger her PTSD and send her spiralling into months of depression where she’d suffer all the lingering effects of her childhood trauma. And she’d seen her for the last time when she’d agreed to pay for her to receive psychological treatment at a clinic in Switzerland, only for her liver to finally give out after years of alcohol abuse two days before her program began.

And, still, she felt sentimental about her. 

It wasn't just Anastasia or the woman next door. All down the ward, they either called for their mothers or brought them up to their partners.

As she held onto Anastasia’s hands, she imagined her own mother, thousands of years earlier, giving birth to her and Lysimachus in an airy villa by The Nile. Had she thought of her mother whilst surrounded by her ladies in waiting and midwives? Had she been frightened? Had she been at all irritated at the fact her father had taken it upon himself to go sailing to pass the time until they’d made their appearance, despite the fact it was the norm? 

She thought of her beloved mother, of the little she knew. She’d died when she’d been much too young to truly know her as a person. To know her likes and her dislikes. To have heard her stories and to have received all the advice she had to offer her. But she’d always seemed so strong... so invincible... she couldn’t imagine her calling out for anyone.

It was at times like this that she wished she was here. That she wished she could be enveloped in her in her arms one last time and be assured by her that all would be well, despite how she already knew it all would eventually work out. 

She just.... wanted her mother. Desperately so.

“I know you miss her,” Anastasia whispered as her contraction began to level out. “I don’t need to read your thoughts to know where your mind is going.”

She smiled sadly. “I’m sorry, my love—“

Anastasia reached up and caressed her cheek with a shaky hand, her thumb trailing gently across her cheekbone. “You never have to be sorry about missing her or wishing she was here, babe.”

“I know that... it simply doesn’t seem like the ideal moment to be hit with such sentiments is all.”

“I would suggest a strong glass of wine but I think it’s frowned upon to get wasted in childbirth even though the babies are on their way out.”

She snorted. “Wine would certainly help... though it has been close to nine months since a drop of alcohol had passed our lips. One drop and we would be incapacitated, and I do not think the mortal doctors would appreciate Drunk Kamilah.”

“Drunk Kamilah could entertain me whilst I’m popping these kids out— like she did in Paris the time she serenaded me beneath the Eiffel Tower with love songs from the Italian Renaissance period at the top of her lungs.”

She cringed and then started laughing. “You swore you’d never speak of that again.”

“My vagina is currently stretching to the point I could be fisted by The Hulk whilst a subway drove straight through me,” Anastasia pouted, “I think I have rights to be a little bitchy.”

“Of course your mind would immediately go to fisting,” she snorted. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Oh, like yours isn’t.”

“That’s besides the point.”

“Is it really?”

“It— You— Oh, shut up,” she chuckled.

The moments of calm between the contractions became fewer and father between rather quickly. Anastasia’s wails and different noises of agony reverberated off of the clinical white walls, and the OBGYN confirmed that things were progressing very well every ten minutes.

It was a rather helpless feeling, to be right there at her beloved’s side and be unable to do more than hold her hand and provide comfort. However, a whispered word of encouragement from a nurse let her know that she was actually doing far more than she realised. She was making Anastasia feel safe and secure in what was essentially one of the most frightening things she’d ever been though... and that was just as important as all the medical jargon flying out of the mouths of medical professionals.

So she did all that she could, overwhelmed with a sudden rising emotion she could only identify as a whole new sort of love, and that would have once scared her to death. She had never expected to feel so much for another person.

“Kami,” Anastasia wailed. She was trying to sit up, holding her breath, eyes bulging out. It was the thing she should not do. 

"Breathe, my love," she whispered in her ear as the room flooded with people who were needed now that it was time to start pushing. "Please, Annie, try. For me, baby. Breathe. Nice and slow.”

She tried to breathe, a couple of shallow inhalations, but it hurt too much. She flopped back on the narrow bed, looking much too tired to go on. All she could do was grip her hand and cry. And Kamilah thought of the way the babies were linked to her, as she was linked to her mother, and her mother before her, all the way back, inside and inside, knit into a chain of disaster and pain that had brought her to this very bed, this day. And not only her... everybody in this room was a product of this pain. 

“I wish I was dead," Anastasia sobbed.

“It’s almost over,” she promised her, kissing her brow. “I promise, my love. I promise—“

“Kamilah,” their doctor said, drawing her attention, “she needs you now more than ever. Keep her as calm and as focused as you can.”

She nodded.

“Anastasia when I count to three you’re going to start pushing, sweetie,” the doctor said gently. “You can do this, alright?”

Anastasia’s eyes flickered to hers in alarm and smiled at her as reassuringly as she could. “You. Can. Do. This.”

The Bloodkeeper nodded and took a deep breath to steady herself. “Okay...”

“I’m here. I’m right here,” she whispered whilst turning her face so that their foreheads were pressed together as the doctor commanded her to start pushing. She knew she’d only get anxious if she was allowed to observe exactly what was happing or truly considered how many people were standing at the foot of her bed, so she held her gaze and stroked the hair at her temple with her thumb, all the while whispering gentle words of encouragement.

She didn’t move from that spot perched on the side of her bed, with one hand framing her face and the other being tightly squeezed. Every so often she cast a glance at what was happening but she didn’t feel the need to have her face right dead centre the way some people did, instead she chose to focus purely on Anastasia and getting her through this final stage of their nine-month-long journey.

With each push her strength waned and she received copious amounts of verbal praise and encouragement from the doctors and nurses alike. It seemed nobody in that room would stand for her losing belief in herself at this last hurdle... and that was oddly comforting.

“I love you so much,” she soothed, placing a kiss to the bridge of her nose as she rested for a moment between pushes. 

Anastasia met her eyes and gave her an exhausted smile. “I love you, too.”

“Just a few more pushes, Anastasia, and the first baby will be here,” the doctor said. “On the count of three, sweetie. One... two... three...”

The room filled with high-pitched cries four minutes later. A girl, Zahra Elisaveta Sayeed, born at exactly 5:32PM. Her first name being Egyptian and meaning ‘flower’, and her middle the name of Anastasia’s dear departed friend, Elisaveta ‘Liv’ Denara.

And exactly six minutes and forty seconds later, at 5:38PM, their son was born. Jax Lysimachus Sayeed. Named for his two uncles, both of whom were still missed and loved dearly.

Later on they were both to describe this particular day as simultaneously the most beautiful and most terrifying of their lives. Neither of them having the souls nor the romanticism to consider natural childbirth an otherworldly experience or an emotionally transporting one, regardless of how wonderful it felt to be handed two little pink screaming bundles and to know that they were theirs.

So far as they both could gather, childbirth mostly involved pain indignity and mess. There was nothing engaging or appealing about the process in the slightest. And a single satisfied moment of wordless eye-contact as they cradled their beautiful infants, in awe of their little family, they declared it had all been worth it but firmly decided they intended never to go through it again.

They had all the joy they needed right there in their arms.

They were all that they would ever need.


	14. your skin and bones turn into something beautiful.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by: Yellow by Mallory Knox.

“Her foolishness knows no bounds,” Kamilah growled as they ran into Central Park. “I will kill them both with my bare hands.”

Having arrived back in the city after a frantic phone call from Adrian saying that they were needed home immediately, they hadn’t had time to arrange for the children to go somewhere safe whilst they dealt with whatever was unfolding. So Jax and Zahra were giddily sprinting along at their heels, absolutely ecstatic at the thought of getting to help solve a real world problem.

“Sister!”

Taking a deep breath that smelled of rain, she was poised to move when a firm hand clasped her elbow and dragged her into the trees. Memories of another hand grabbing her sent panic shooting through her veins.

She swung around, ready to stab her assailant in the eyes.

"Whoa. You okay?,” Adrian gasped as he lightened his clasp around her arm. He cast her an apologetic glance, knowing her well enough to know exactly where she’d gone.

She caught her breath and stared up at him. "Indeed. You just... surprised me. You need to whistle when you come up on me— what’s happening?”

Anastasia reached out and stroked a hand up and down the length of her back, but didn’t otherwise make a scene out of what she was only too aware had just happened. And Kamilah felt herself settle, even just a little bit. Anastasia could do that. Make her forget, even if it was just for a few seconds, without even accessing her abilities. She couldn't stop the slow nod of assent. Relief swept through her and her thundering heart rate began to even itself out. She was with the one who sheltered her, protected her, who gave her everything she needed. With her, she was safe.

“Aiko, Henry, their underlings, and at least a couple of hundred ferals,” he growled whilst giving the children and Anastasia hugs. “Serafine and Lily are leading the clans in battle by Bethesda Terrace... the plan now is to hold them off until dawn—“

“No it’s not,” Anastasia said as they began walking quickly towards the battlefield. “The plan now is to finish this—“

“Annie,” she interjected. “I admire your vigour but you know as well as I do that you’re psychically exhausted after our weeks upstate...” She trailed off and studied their children briefly before her eyes flickered back to Anastasia. “All four of us together, you mean...”

“You know I would end this by myself in a second if I could but I’ve expended so much psychic energy recently it’s going to take me a few more days before I recover enough strength—“

“There’s no shame in reaching your limits, my love,” she breathed. “It simply means you’ve given something your all.”

“Zahra can incapacitate the Ferals whilst Jax deals with the vampires working for them, and you and I can head straight for Henry and Aiko. I’ll only use as much psychic energy as I can spare without making myself sick, I promise,” Anastasia said. “We’ll capture them now and have them sentenced to face the sun—“

“But—“

“The kids don’t need to see you beheading your ex,” she whispered. “No matter how much you want to be the one to do it, it will be a murder fuelled by your personal hatred for her and not an assassination for political security. They don’t need to see that or pick up on all the complexities of that psychic energy— we have to keep it simple, for their sake if nothing else.”

She sighed and relented with a subtle nod her head. She had recognised early on her wife had a gift. Her voice could be compelling, or commanding, and those in her presence always reacted to it. She could calm others down, arouse or infuriate, all with her tone.

“We get to help?,” Zahra and Jax both shrieked excitedly.

“You do,” Anastasia said. “You’re both going to stand well out of the way of the fighting, Uncle Adrian will guard you whilst you work—“

“I get to send all the ferals to hell?,” Zahra grinned.

“Yes,” Anastasia said, bending down so she was looking her in the eyes. “Do you remember what I did with the ferals that night when we were playing and at The Shadow Den?”

“What if I fail, though?”

“You’re meant for greatness. I don't care how many times you've tried to go for it and failed. Or how many times you’ve attempted to unleash the fire within you. Or how many times you've tried to become a badass and fallen short. You’re meant for greatness,” Anastasia softly. “You can do this, sweetheart. Your potential is only limited by your mind.”

Zahra nodded, determination shining in her eyes as she took a deep, steadying breath. “I can do it, mommy.”

“I know you can,” smiled The Bloodkeeper. “But I don’t want you to try and tackle them all at once, do you understand me? You’re going to break them up into more manageable smaller groups of five and keep as many of them away from Mama and I as you can, okay?”

“Okay!,” she shrieked excitedly, fist pumping the air. “I’ll fight these bitches.”

“Good girl— and please don’t say bitches,” Anastasia said. She then turned to Jax. “You’re going to use your abilities to incapacitate the vampires fighting for Aiko and Henry, so that the Clans and your Aunties can finish them off—“

“And I hold them still until they stake them?,” he prodded. “Like I do to you in training when you have me make you freeze when you sneak attack?”

“Yes,” Anastasia said. “Exactly like that, honey. You make them freeze, that way the adults can handle everything else.”

“I’ll make you both very proud,” he smiled. “Like my uncles Jax and Lysimachus. I’ll fight like a good soldier. I will not be afraid... because my uncles weren’t afraid.”

“Me too,” Zahra added. “But I’ll fight like Scarlet Witch and Black Widow and Eleven all in one— and Hermione, but I don’t have a wand.”

“We know you will,” Kamilah murmured as she drew them and her wife into a hug. There wasn’t the time to say more than that before the sound of the shrill cries of battle flooded the park like light engulfing a silhouette.

“Be brave. Be strong,” Anastasia whispered, kissing them both on their rosy cheeks.

“Go,” Adrian urged them. “I’ll protect them with my life.”

And at that, they ran.

Together she and her wife alternated back and forth, protecting each other’s backs as they blazed onto the bloody battlefield to the cheers of the clans. Anastasia may not have currently had the psychic strength to shake the earth beneath their feet, but that didn’t make her any less deadly. When her psychic flame fell, the lightning sparking from the sharp clashes of Kamilah’s daggers rose, and so on. Together, they had a chance.

All around them ferals began to still and crumble to ash as Zahra’s abilities took hold. Vampires froze in small groups as Jax took them within his unbreakable hold, stilling them so that stakes could be easily plunged into their chests. But they were only children, despite how strong they were they simply couldn’t still the entire battle the way Anastasia would’ve been able to if she’d had enough time to recover from everything.

She stared down at the dead body of an underling clad in the military black that was typical of vampires scuffles like this one — her first kill of this fight — her dagger still protruding from his chest until she yanked it out with his heart pierced on the end of it before he slowly crumbled to ash. Dark blood stained the cheap fabric of his shirt, his shoulder, his hands, the grooves of the dagger itself. His eyes were closed now. And she knelt before him and smoothed strands of his dark hair away from his face. It was an odd thing, that eerily familiar battle-calm. She didn’t take in any details of the scene. She could bring herself to feel nothing but that deep numbness that overtook every seasoned warrior in battle.

The look of the man reminded her all too much of herself back in the middle ages. Back when she’d been little more than a bloodthirsty beast. She recalled her reflection shining in a freshly polished dagger on one battlefield or other. Ashes had flaked down over her cheeks and nose, marking her. The red stain she had used on her lips was fresh blood. 

For some reason that single glimpse of her own reflection was what she recalled most about that battle. She couldn’t even remember who she and Gaius had been fighting or why. But she recalled her own reflection and how she had seen bits and pieces of her mother staring back at her, but twisted with hate and fury her mother never needed to know.

At the time she had not been sorry for it.

She had been angry.

She had been lost.

And she had promised herself on that long forgotten battlefield that one day she would watch each and every one of her enemies burn. Much may have changed since then but the sentiment certainly remained.

“Sugar Mama Sayeed!,” Lily whooped whilst kicking a male assailant between his legs... hard enough that his balls probably wound up in his throat. “Fancy seeing y’all here.”

“Focus, you imbecile,” she laughed. “Put him out of his misery already!”

“But—“

“Lily Spencer, did I stutter?”

Anastasia and Serafine both started laughing as Lily flipped her off before shooting the groaning man who was clutching his injured genitals with her crossbow. The specially crafted arrow made by Raines Corp went straight through his neck, severing his head in one precise blow.

She couldn’t help but smile proudly. As Niccolo Machiavelli once said: ‘people should either be caressed or crushed. If you do them minor damage they will get their revenge; but if you cripple them there is nothing they can do. If you need to injure someone, do it in such a way that you do not have to fear their vengeance.’ It was nice to see her remembering the basics of her training so well.

The girl might have had an unsettling crying problem, and a fundamental inability to go more than two minutes without swearing, but she was pure steel.

“It is good to see you both,” Serafine beamed whilst using her abilities to gouge a snarling woman’s eyeballs straight from her skull. 

“That was dramatic even by your standards,” Anastasia concluded.

“I am nothing if not the star of every battle, ma petite.”

“The star?,” Kamilah snorted whilst plunging her blades into a man’s neck. “I was unaware this was a Broadway play.”

“I pretend I am once again dancing barefoot in the bloodstained streets of Paris during the revolution each and every time I grace a battlefield with my presence,” she sighed happily. “The drama in my mind puts Les Miserables to shame, I dare say!”

She rolled her eyes and muttered, “and here I thought I was a little too bloodthirsty.”

They may have been a coarse and crude bunch. They made rude finger gestures to one another and they wore their scars like badges. They talked about death and war like they were some of their most pleasant memories. But they were a family, unbreakable, loyal and absolutely powerful when they stood together like this.

“They’re over there,” Anastasia said, drawing her attention to the far side of the fountain as she dealt with one of their pitiful underlings — a delusional mortal who’d clearly been offered a Turning in order to help them. She used a technique she’d developed herself to kill the fool, breaking the neck cleanly, so there was no suffering. It was important not to allow it to be personal, if at all possible. You always wanted the deaths in any battle to be about justice, not revenge.

She turned back to her slowly, those eyes of hers meeting her’s until she felt the impact all the way through her body, as if she'd shot an arrow and it was lodged in the vicinity of her heart. She had to resist putting her hand over her chest and pressing hard.

“Why aren’t they fighting... or running for their lives?”

“They never intended to survive this,” Anastasia said simply. “They believe so much in the idea of vampire supremacy that they were willing to die to back me into a corner.”

“What a waste of potential,” she huffed. “Fools the lot of them.”

Then with a single nod, they took off running towards the fountain, not caring a single bit for their clothing as they ran straight through the water towards the fools who’d started this.

“Aiko!,” she shrieked.

“Kamilah,” Aiko smirked as she sat herself on a bench beside Henry, so casually you’d think she was out for a mundane stroll before the break of dawn. “Your wife will have to use her abilities if she wishes to stop this. She’ll have to show us all what she can really—“

She was cut off as an invisible force hauled her to her feet and Anastasia threw a dagger at her face, which sliced her across the cheek. 

“You disgrace our kind by not allowing us to overrule the mortals!,” Henry yelled as he tried and failed to move in his invisible bindings. “They are savages—“

“Yes, so I’ve heard. But either way, shamed or not, I am the Bloodkeeper, and this is the last time you will sit in my presence,” Anastasia smiled, using all the strength she had left in her to pull him to his feet too. “One thing you really should’ve learned by now: a petty rebellion like this one that is contained to its borders will always fail, stamped out by those in charge. But something bigger, a wave across multiple societies, another foundation to explode beneath the one you’re trying to bring down’s cursed feet — that has a chance. That’s how I got to where I am in life, because one chance was all I required to do what I must— but I give you an A for effort.”

Then Kamilah heard a wild, high-pitched cackling that made the hair stand up on the back of her neck. It wasn't sane, that laugh. In fact, it was the laughter of someone who never had more than a nodding acquaintance with sanity. How had she ever found the woman that it belonged to appealing?

She breathed away all the anger, all emotions, and the desire to slice this fool’s head off as she bound their arms behind their backs with the supplies she kept stashed in her pockets, cloaking herself with grace and everything in her settled, once more allowing complete control over herself.

“You may be fooling your dimwitted lover—“

“My wife, you cretinous bitch,” Kamilah interjected before Aiko could finish. “Since I've had to endure your pettiness and your ugliness my since the thirteenth century, I'm immune to whatever venom you choose to spew. However, and you'd better hear me, Aiko, I will not tolerate you doing the same thing to my woman. She's my choice. She's always going to be my choice— she’s everything you couldn’t even dream of being.”

“Your wife,” she said slyly. “But I have known you longer than this upstart has even been alive. I know the real Kamilah. The bloodthirsty one. The one who loathes mortals as much as I do and would not hesitate to rid the world of them—“

“You know nothing.”

“Gods do not ally with insects, they are infected by them!,” Aiko spat. There it was, again, that bizarre hurt in her eyes. Maybe hurt. Something. Sadness. That was it. She detested that look. Why did she still look at her like she was the reason she was unhappy after all this time? It was more than unhappy. Self-pitying. Desolate, as if she was completely alone and she'd taken her last joy from her when she’d left Japan with Gaius all those years ago.

“Gods?,” she laughed humourlessly. “It seems your ability to vastly overestimate your own importance has not changed at all since the thirteenth century. You are no god, Aiko. You are nothing more than a parasite ticking away on borrowed blood. You’ll turn to ash the moment the sun touches your skin just like your friend Henry here.”

“You’re sentencing us to face the sunlight?,” Henry gasped, his eyes drifting to the sky that was bleeding red on the horizon. The old fool was dynamite, without any idea or goals of his own and loyal to the one who lit the fuse. “Why not just stake us to offer a quicker death? Your judgment is flawed!”

“The punishment will fit the severity of the crime,” Anastasia deadpanned as she shoved the fool to his knees in front of the Bethesda Arcade. “And as the ring leaders of this little disturbance, you will face a more painful death than the idiots you managed to rope into upsetting the peace and serve as an example to everybody else. That’s the trouble with explaining with words, you know... people don’t listen. If you explain with actions, people damn well listen.”

At that moment, Kamilah fully understood for the first time why people said Anastasia was the only leader in the world the US government was genuinely afraid of. The look on her face as she stared down at the kneeling imbeciles at her feet wasn’t anything like the look Gaius would’ve had on his face standing in her shoes. She wasn’t enjoying this in the slightest, but she understood why they had to die on a deeper level than anybody else ever could. There was no malevolent smile upon her sweet face, no amused twinkle in those big sparkly eyes that were so enrapturing. There was cold fury in every line of her delicate features; a sense of the ancient power bound to her blood radiated from Anastasia in waves as though she were giving off burning heat, despite the fact she wasn’t actively tapping into her abilities at all.

Until the end, Gaius had been the king of a society that had only really been plagued by trouble that he started. His reign had been largely untested and easy; he never had to know war until he grew bored and decided he wished to shed blood. He’d had the luxury of pretending to be a sympathetic ruler whenever it so fitted him or whenever he required amusement. As the Bloodkeeper, Anastasia didn’t have that luxury... she always had to appear strong. Decisive. But also fair. 

The exhausted members of the Clans had already begun to preemptively take shelter beneath the arcade, but they were quite clearly thrilled at having the chance to see these fools put to death.

“Let this be a warning to all who think that we vampires are somehow more important than mortals and other supernatural communities in the world. To all who think they can ever force my hand or manipulate me into serving their own agendas,” Anastasia said as the children ran to their sides. “I will say this only once: I will go to war should there ever be a cause I think worth dying for — and not before. If there is anyone stupid enough to attack me, or threaten my family, or the peace that exists in the world, I will show you the end of the world — close up. If you want a beast, I’ll give you teeth and claws... I just hope that you’ll be ready to bleed for it.”

“Die, you foolish imbeciles!,” Zahra beamed as she twirled her daggers around her hands. Her outburst sent a ripple of laughter through the gathered spectators as the sun began to rise and Aiko and Henry began to flinch.

“Any last words?,” Kamilah deadpanned.

“Go fuck yourself, Kamilah,” Aiko grumbled.

“Hey!,” Jax pouted. “Don’t speak to our Mama like that, you rude motherfucker!”

“Yeah!,” Zahra added. “Your ass is being sent back to hell so shut up... motherfucker!”

“Language!,” Kamilah hissed as all four of them stepped back hand-in-hand. “Were the motherfuckers absolutely necessary in those sentences?!”

“Yes,” they said in unison.

“Auntie Lily says that adding a motherfucker to a sentence when you’re talking to a dumbass bitch makes it more epic when you throw the mic at their face rather than dropping it on the floor at the end,” Jax added, his eyes widening. “But that time I didn’t say motherfucker, dumbass, or bitch. I was just telling you what Auntie Lily told us.”

“Unbelievable.” She sighed and shook her head in a state of complete and utter dismay, though she was smiling all the while. Smiling that rare smile that only three people could bring to her, the one that transformed her face from rugged, dangerous, very feminine beauty to something much softer and approachable. “Un-bloody-believable.”

Anastasia smirked at her and she looked down onto her face. So gorgeous in the pinkish light of the Spring sunrise. It wasn't just her beautiful, very feminine features, it was the way she was inside. Her thoughtful Anastasia. She liked that trait in her. The stillness in her smile, that seemed to swim in the oceans of those big blue eyes and drown her whenever she gazed into them. She brought a sense of peace to her surroundings, regardless of where they were.

“They’re not burning,” somebody in the crowd whispered as Aiko and Henry began to smoulder and their little family remained unharmed by the sun.

“I didn’t think the rumours about The Bloodkeeper walking in the sun were true,” said another. “But how is Kamilah untouched by it?”

“You saw those kids fighting for us just now,” another murmured. “They were like miniature Bloodkeepers with that power! Maybe they have something to do with it!”

As Aiko and Henry breathed their last she glanced at their shadows, thrown from the morning light from the little flames dancing in their crumbling bodies. Her shadow and Anastasia’s were connected, as were their children’s. More than connected. It looked as if their bodies had intertwined to the point that it appeared to be one shadow, not four separate ones.

Time seemed immeasurable as they stood there in the sun, an unending expanse where an hour could just as easily have been a second which could have been a week, and she would have no way of knowing. It was both infinite and infinitesimal at once.

And their children stood proudly at the sides of the unquestionable queens of the vampires... as the true heroes of the day. Zahra: a princess of ashes, Jax: a prince of flame, and she and Anastasia: the queens of blood, regal and strong; there was nothing left of them to burn. All knew exactly what they could do. They may have been a ruling family without a crown, without a throne, and without a coronation... but they were the undisputed vampire royalty.

“Justice is served," she said softly.

They stood there until Aiko and Henry had crumbled to ash and Kamilah pulled her wife in for a kiss. Claiming her as her’s right there in front of the gobsmacked onlookers. She was rough, demanding, and so possessive that Anastasia giggled against her lips. She wanted her to feel her brand of love. Complete. Encompassing. Reverent. Carnal.

She looked at the piles of ash and she was not horrified. She looked at it, indulging in the sunlight around her, feeding her, strengthening her, and she realised that she was happy that they were dead. Truly happy. When anybody was made to pay for such insolence, she would revel in their ruin.

Her wife was not like the other rulers of their society who had come before her. She only killed to save. She put others first.

“Why are they kneeling?,” Jax prodded, drawing both her’s and Anastasia’s attention to their gathered clansmen. Everybody, including their family had dropped to one knee and were staring at them like... like how Cleopatra had always wanted the people of Egypt to look at her. They were on their knees out of a respect which had been earned and not out of obligation... and that was the major difference.

“Good lord,” Adrian breathed. “You’ve actually done it...”

Lily let out a loud cheer that must’ve broken the sound barrier. “That’s my girl! Slay ‘em with your nerdiness, you sexy bitch!”

“You’ve conquered the sun, Ms. Anastasia,” Nikhil breathed. 

Anastasia laughed sheepishly. “I mean... yeah. That’s a thing I did.”

And that answer launched a thousand questions all being hurled their direction at once, which only stopped when Kamilah’s eyes flared red and the word ‘silence’ left her lips in a throaty growl. “You will all gain the ability to walk in the sun in time, I assure you,” she said. “However, my wife and children are exhausted and we have graced you all with our presence for long enough.”

“There will be a world council meeting held at Raines Corp tomorrow night at 10pm,” Anastasia said. “Send your Clan leaders your questions and we will live stream the meeting, where I will answer as many of your questions as I can.”

“Yeah!,” Zahra said. “You heard our mommies. No more questions or more motherfuckers will be sent to hell with the Santa stabbing mortals and those dumbasses who just turned to ash.”

Kamilah snorted and looked down at their daughter, and right away she could see that she was trying to mimic her and Anastasia. Her stance and movements almost synchronised to their own. And she and her wife shared an amused look, their expressions almost identically similar, wit arched brows and half-smiles.

“That shit ain’t my fault!,” Lily yelped as everybody started to laugh and Kamilah’s crimson gaze fell on her. “I swear on my motherfucking life I’m not the one teaching them to swear.”

Kamilah rolled her eyes and she and Anastasia took their children’s hands to begin the walk home. Almost immediately, before they could so much as praise them for how they conducted themselves or check that they were alright, the children began recounting their war story to them... a very overdramatised version of it, at least. One that somehow included invisible giants and goblins and a sea monster trapped in the fountain.

All she could do was laugh at the entertainment and at the fact they seemed completely unaffected by their first real battle to protect Manhattan for those who sought to bring it to harm. It brought her a great deal of happiness to see them this way— as innocent and happy as ever.

“I think I should wear more trousers,” Zahra said eventually. “I was watching the grownups fight and I think my dresses might be a silly idea because then people will see my undies when I’m kicking them in the face and flashing your undies is rude.”

“Kicking people in the face is rude,” Jax pointed out.

“Not in battle. You don’t have to be polite when you’re sending your enemies to hell, Jax... but I still don’t think flashing undies is a nice thing to do.” Zahra shook her head dismissively. “Skirts and ballet pumps seem stupid, I need spikey boots like Auntie Lily wears and trousers, because stuff needs to be kicked and there are a lot of imbeciles who deserve a boot in their ugly faces.”

“That’s dramatic,” Jax said without fully understanding what the world meant... which somehow only made his remark more amusing.

“Save the drama for the queens!,” Zahra fired back. “We’re like jedi’s now. We’re warriors so we should be anything but a damn drama queen!”

Kamilah laughed out loud at that, so hard that she almost doubled over. Why was it that their daughter was more like her than she was at times? “Indeed,” she laughed. “That has been my philosophy for years— as has the notion that trousers will always be a more practical choice of fashion when there are so many imbeciles deserving of a good, strong kick to the face.”

Anastasia cleared her throat and shot her a glare.

She sighed and quickly clarified, “Not that I’m advocating kicking people in the face off the battlefield. That would be wrong.”

She was happy to have this harmony in her home-life at all times. That their little family was a sanctuary where, no matter the horrors they saw, the things they had to do in order to bring justice to those who would harm others, she could find her peace.

~~~~ five years earlier ~~~~

“I feel like a cow,” Anastasia giggled into Kamilah’s shoulder. The Bloodkeeper was practically delirious with exhaustion after her twenty-six hour ordeal, even after consuming a bag of blood to help her regain her strength. “And not only because there is literally milk coming from my tits right now,” she continued. “Do I look as gross as I feel?”

“Hush,” she cooed whilst pressing a kiss to her hair. “You look absolutely beautiful.”

“Are you sure your hands are okay?”

A soft laugh left her lips and she drew her eyes away from the two feeding infants, who were latched onto her breasts for the first time. “You do realise that what you have just endured is far worse than the badges of honour I earned throughout your ordeal, don’t you?”

Anastasia huffed in amusement. “Badges of honour?”

Kamilah shrugged and inspected the already healing bruises and half-moon shaped imprints that decorated both of her hands. Badges of honour were exactly what these blemishes were in her eyes, as she’d gained them supporting her wife in what was the hardest thing either of them had ever gone through. She’d stepped up to the plate and she hadn’t left Anastasia’s side even once since the moment her very first contraction had hit.

“I said what I said,” she smirked as she reached down and brushed each of their children’s heads lightly with the backs of her fingers. 

It was an oddly beautiful thing to witness the body that had given them life continuing to sustain them like this, and a rather intimate thing as well. She’d be able to help feed them when they required blood or when Anastasia finally tried the torturous looking breast pump the pregnancy books had insisted they invest in, but for now she was happy just cuddling up in that uncomfortable little hospital bed beside her beloved and offering her all the emotional support she could.

People had thought her made of ice for a number of reasons, but the biggest was because she truly had been ice inside for so long. A glacier. Deep, wide, dense, impossible to penetrate. She had thought her ancient heart encased in ice. She thought her emotions long since frozen, but the woman at her side and the babies in her arms had changed everything, including her perception of herself.

She focused on the lit candle rested on the bedside table — it may have been against hospital regulation to light candles but no mortal was going to tell her what to do — the steady dancing of the flame as it shrank and grew at the same pace as her quick heartbeat. She watched as it slowed and a strange calm spread over her. She shouldn’t be calm. Should she? Weren’t all new parents freaking out?

She should not be calm, but she was. There was only one path ahead of her now, and she could see it clearly lit. It was a wonderful path, one she adored. She would only grow stronger for walking down it and she would not come out the other side the same.

The sweetest smile twitched at the corners of Anastasia’s lips. “You really were amazing throughout all of that, you know— not just all the screaming and pain, but the whole last nine months.”

“I was amazing?,” she breathed in complete and utter disbelief. “Annie, look what you did, my love.” She rested the side of her head against hers, both of their eyes glued on their infants. “You made them— and you didn’t merely do what every other woman has done for nine months. It’s because of your brilliance that they can exist at all.” She snaked her right arm around her shoulders and brought her hand up to play with the messy strands of coppery hair framing her right temple whilst pressing a kiss to her left. “I’m amazed by you.”

Anastasia closed the distance between their lips and gave her the gentlest of kisses, and when she spoke she felt each one of her words against her lips. “I love you so much, Kami.”

“I love you, too.” She pecked her lips once more. “And I am so proud of you.”

Once each of the babies had drank their fill she helped Anastasia adjust her hospital gown to preserve her modesty and then took Jax into her arms to burp him whilst Anastasia tended to Zahra. They were both so unbelievably tiny that she was almost afraid of accidentally being too heavy handed whilst cradling them in her arms— how bizarre it was to think that she’d once been this size!

Babies were so soft. Anyone looking at them could see the tender, fragile skin and know it for the rose-leaf velvet softness that invited a finger's touch. But when you lived with them and loved them this much, you felt the softness going inward, the round-cheeked flesh wobbly as custard, the boneless splay of the tiny hands. Their joints were melted rubber, and even when you kissed them on their foreheads, in the passion of loving their existence, your lips seemed to sink down and yet never seemed to find bone. Holding them against your chest, they melted and moulded to your touch, as though they might at any moment disappear.

But even now, right at these first precious moments at the very start, there was that small streak of steel within each child. That thing that said "I am," and formed the core of their personalities. So far, despite being the smaller of the two, Zahra seemed the most high spirited. Her cries were deafening and she never seemed to want to be still, even whilst she was sleeping. Whereas Jax simply didn’t scream or wail, his cries sounded like the mewling of a newborn kitten, and he had been giving them lots of reflex smiles.

As she lay there in that hospital bed with her family she wondered how their little personalities would continue to develop. She knew from the children born into her clan that by the second year, the bones hardened and the child stood upright, their skull wide and solid, a helmet protecting the softness within. And the "I am" grew, too. Looking at them, you could almost see it, sturdy as heartwood, glowing through the translucent flesh.

The bones of the face truly emerged at five or six, and the soul within was fixed long before that. The process of encapsulation went on, to reach its peak in the glossy shell of adolescence, when all softness then was hidden under the nacreous layers of the multiple new personalities that teenagers tried on to guard themselves.

In the next years, the hardening spread from the centre, as one found and fixed the facets of the soul, until the "I am" was set, delicate and detailed as an insect encased in amber. 

Who would these babies grow up to be? She wondered. What miracles would they achieve in their lives?

“Do we knock or just barge in like we normally do?,” an irritatingly familiar voice said in the hallway.

“Knock, Lily,” Adrian sighed. “They’ve been through quite the ordeal and we don’t know what condition Anastasia is in—“

“I’m well aware my girl just squeezed two kids out her pussy— and I will be asking her immediately if when the water breaks it’s like how squirting looks in porn, by the way—“

“You will do nothing of the sort,” Adrian laughed weakly.

“Try to stop me, bro. This is an important scientific question—“

“Knock on the door,” Serafine sighed. “I am not carrying these balloons for the good of my health—“

“But what if knocking wakes my niece and nephew?,” Lily puzzled. “I say we just walk in like, surprise, motherfuckers—“

“Oh, for goodness sake,” Serafine huffed at the same time a light rap echoed off the door and the distinctive sound of Lily being shoved out of the way carried into their room.

“You can come in,” she called whilst rolling her eyes.

When the door opened the family wasted no time tumbling inside with an array of balloons, flowers, and god only knew what else. But the moment their eyes landed on the bed in which Kamilah was laying with her family in her arms, they froze.

This may have been the first time she’d ever seen any of them driven speechless.

“The answer to your question is no,” Anastasia said to Lily, breaking the silence. “It’s not like having a Super Soaker in your vagina.”

“Damn,” Lily breathed, swallowing thickly as she approached the bed with tears in her eyes. “They’re— wow. I don’t think I’d even love my own kid this much.”

She and Anastasia both laughed at that, smiling as the sentiment was echoed by Serafine and Adrian.

“Everybody, this is Zahra,” Kamilah said proudly as she introduced their daughter, who was sleeping so soundly in the crook of her arm that she didn’t so much as stir as she was handed to her Uncle Adrian.

“Zahra,” he repeated with a smile on his face and tears in his eyes. 

“And this is Jax,” Anastasia beamed, handing their happy baby boy to his Auntie Lily for a cuddle.

“He’d like that,” Lily sniffled, kissing her nephew on the forehead as Serafine leaned over her shoulder to gently stroke his cheek. 

“They’re beautiful,” Serafine breathed. “Precious little angels, that’s what they are.”

“I’ve been an auntie for ten seconds and I’d already burn the world down for these two,” Lily murmured. 

Kamilah let out a soft laugh and her eyes flickered to the helium filled balloons they’d brought them. One of them — Lily, presumably — had taken it upon themselves to buy out every balloon seller in Manhattan it seemed.

“Why do we have bachelorette balloons?,” she laughed. “I don’t think a bra, a bottle of champagne, a thong, and— is that a balloon shaped like a glass of wine? I don’t think these are the normal balloons new parents receive.”

“Now that the babies are out my girl can get back to hoeing it up for you,” Lily said plainly as she handed Jax to meet his Auntie Serafine, then shifted so that she was sat cross legged on the end of the bed. “I wasn’t allowed to go to that kinky ass sex store on Park Avenue to buy freakier balloons—“

“Rightly so,” she sighed, flashing Adrian and Serafine grateful looks. “I dread to think what sort of balloons you would’ve appeared with had you been allowed to run wild.”

“Anyway,” snorted Lily, “what kind of friend would I be if I didn’t celebrate you getting your sub back and homegirl here being able to be gagged, cuffed, blindfolded, and tortured till she can’t walk?”

“This is exactly why you’re my best friend,” Anastasia giggled.

“Girl, right?!,” Lily laughed. “Mr and Mrs Vanilla over here,” she nodded towards Adrian and Serafine sitting on either side of her, “wouldn’t—“

“I’m not vanilla,” Serafine pouted. “Show me a vanilla person with a dungeon in the spare bedroom of their apartment.”

“Don’t take it personally. Compared to our resident redheaded freak over there, everybody is vanilla,” Lily said dismissively. 

Kamilah snorted. That was indeed a very, very valid point. Even her sexual interests paled in comparison to her wife’s... and she was kinky enough that she’d genuinely believed for more than two thousand years that she’d never find anybody who could keep up with her. It’d come as quite the pleasant surprise when she’d first discovered that she was hopelessly out-kinked by the then twenty-two year old mortal who’d to become her wife.

“Anyway, I was saying that they vetoed my idea of getting kinky ass balloons and a whole bunch of sex toys,” Lily continued. “Nothing says I love you like a hamper filled with straps, paddles, vibrators, and maybe even a riding crop—“

“This conversation is inappropriate to be having in front of our infants, you fool,” she snorted. “Reel it in.”

“Well I think the idea was awesome,” Anastasia giggled.

“Of course you do,” Kamilah chuckled, kissing her hair. 

Anastasia smiled at her sleepily and rested her head against her shoulder. Under normal circumstances this conversation would’ve opened up hours worth of ridiculous banter and created thousands of new inside jokes, but the Bloodkeeper was feeling much too exhausted and fragile to be able to handle too much teasing — regardless of how well meaning or affectionate it may be.

As the conversation wore on and they described the birth, Kamilah noted right away that for once she was the one doing most of the talking. She’d normally lurk on the boundaries of casual conversation and chime in with her opinions and sarcastic remarks whenever she felt it appropriate to do so — and she was always perfectly happy to allow her wife to speak on behalf of both of them in group settings, as she found most conversations incredibly taxing. However, she carried this conversation with ease as her wife dosed on her shoulder — she seemed like she could easily have fallen asleep and stayed that way for a week, which was perfectly understandable, all things considered.

“I’m proud of you,” Adrian said the moment Serafine and Lily left to go grab them a decent meal from Cipriani. He was stood by the little glass cribs at the side of the bed, watching over his niece and nephew, poised and proud as a guardian angel. 

“Adrian—“

“It has to be said,” he interjected. “The courage it took for you to get to this point is astounding, sister. Given that I have known you for so long, I feel it my duty to point it out.”

She swallowed thickly. “Courage?”

“Courage.” He nodded. “It is to give when hope is gone, when there is no chance that men may call you a hero, when you have tried and failed and rise to try again— and the way you have changed your life is result of the most valiant display of courage I have ever seen.”

She smiled softly at the friend who had stood beside her when she was wrong and when she was so right that all others despised her for it. At her brother. At the first person she’d truly considered her family since losing Lysimachus. 

“You’re getting far too good at that for your own good, you know,” she said after a watery laugh.

“And what’s that?,” he smirked.

“At disarming me.”

“Perhaps you’re merely going soft in your old age.”

She huffed in amusement. It was indeed very true but one certainly would not catch her admitting to being either soft or old. “I assure you, brother, I do not know what you are talking about.”

Noticing that Anastasia looked cold beneath the blanket, she decided immediately that simply would not do at all. So she got up as carefully as she could to avoid disrupting her sleep and dug through their roller bag to find the extra blanket she’d insisted on bringing for this very reason. 

She wasted no time in tucking her sleeping wife up like a burrito beneath the red wine coloured fabric and drawing her into her embrace to share her body heat with her. She did all this whilst smiling softly and peppering chaste kisses across her hair and her peaky-looking face, wanting to ensure that even in her sleep Anastasia felt safe and loved beyond measure— the pregnancy books had said that in some cases post-natal depression could set in this early and she wanted to do all she could to prevent that from happening to her beloved. Even if it was doing something as rudimentary as making sure she was warm and comfortable— she’d do anything to ensure she didn’t feel alone.

When she finally turned her attention back to Adrian he was smiling smugly at her, as if his point had just been vindicated. That look alone was basically an invitation urging her to stab him in the eyes.

“What?,” she huffed. “And before you answer, keep in mind I came here so heavily armed I am basically a small tank, ready and willing to slit throats of anyone who dared breathe in my wife’s direction the wrong way. I would think nothing of launching myself across this hospital room to defend my honour.”

He snorted and looked down at the sleeping babies in their cribs, shaking his head all the while. “Absolutely nothing, softy.”

“Softy?!,” she whisper-yelled. “Who the hell are you calling softy?!”

“Simmer down, tank commander.”

“I—“ She cut off abruptly as Anastasia shifted so that her head was rested on her chest and her expression softened considerably. With a gentle hand, she petted the wispy hairs framing her temple and pressed a kiss to her crown, her heart rate doubling when Anastasia smiled in her sleep and nuzzled against her. 

For a long moment she simply forgot Adrian was standing there at all. Never mind the fact he was struggling not to laugh so hard that he had gone red in the face and was making a wheezing sound that made him sound like he was breathing his last.

“I— You— Shut up,” she pouted. “If you intend to kick the bucket, do so in the hallway. My wife and children are sleeping rather peacefully and I will not be amused in the slightest if you disturb them.”

“Are you ever amused?,” he snorted.

She glared at him. “Frequently.”

“Whatever you say, softy.”

“Do you people get off on tormenting me?,” she sighed. “If it’s not Lily Spencer calling me in the dead of night because she’s in some sort of trouble, it’s this—“

“You’re just so magnificently tormentable,” he shrugged. “And I intend upon teaching my niece and nephew at the earliest possible moment to join in on the fun—“

“You wouldn’t dare.”

He snorted. “I taught Charles to stick his tongue out behind my mother-in-law’s back before his first birthday. So you just try me.”

She huffed lightly. “My children will be highly proficient with daggers, so you will do so at your own peril.”

“I’m sure Anastasia is thrilled at the thought of toddlers running around with pointy objects and calling people imbeciles at the top of their lungs.”

They both shared a laugh at that and she rested her cheek on top of her wife’s head, petting her hair all the while. Her eyes flickered to the little glass cribs at the side of the bed and the sight almost brought tears to her eyes once more. Grace and humility had filled those lonely places that had once riddled her ancient soul, replacing them with laughter and joy. The woman nestled in her arms had given her the purpose she had always needed in the form of a son and a daughter, she’d given her everything she needed to maintain her balance in a bloodthirsty world of stark duty and terrible memories. She’d given her everything she needed in order to truly start anew.

There was something human left in her after all this time, after all. She could 'feel'. She hadn't believed it possible, and in a short number of decades this angelic creature in her arms, resting so peacefully, had turned her world upside down. She took away sorrow and anger, replacing it with acceptance and love. She was... salvation. Everything good. She lit up a room just as she lit up her life.

“I understand what you meant when you said you fell in love with Eleanor even more watching her bring your son into the world,” she said quietly. “The love I feel for our children and for her— I did not even know I was capable of it... or that this sort of love existed in the world.”

“It will only go stronger with each passing day,” he smiled, resting a hand on her shoulder. “You will think you have reached your capacity for love and somehow continue to love them even more. Whenever they smile at you. Whenever you see her holding them. When they look you in the eyes and tell you they love you for the first time— there is nothing that comes close to the joy you will feel.”

She covered his hand with hers and gave his fingers a tight squeeze. “I would not have been able to support her even half as well as I apparently did if it were not for your advice,” she confessed. “I— thank you. For everything.”

“It’s what I’m here for,” he breathed. “I’ll support you in everything you do, Kamilah. Always.”


	15. now the past can be outrun.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by; Best Is Yet To Come by Red.

“I must say,” Kamilah beamed as she studied the necklace hanging around her neck that had been handmade out of glitter and uncooked macaroni she’d been presented as a Mother’s Day gift, “that this may just be the single most dazzling piece of jewellery I have ever owned. I’ll be the envy of the office.”

Zahra and Jax gave one another an enthusiastic high five at the praise. This was the first year that they’d vehemently insisted that they be completely in charge of the presents, rather than taking two separate shopping trips where she and Anastasia would each steer them in the direction of something the other wanted and convince them it was their idea to purchase it. So rather than their usual morning filled with glittering jewels and couture fashion pieces, they’d been presented with a wide array of handmade trinkets... which somehow only made the day that much sweeter.

Though, she’d had a series of small heart attacks and very likely would’ve had a stroke — were she mortal — when she’d been presented with a 1760 year old dagger from her collection with a newly bedazzled hilt and a blade that had been decorated to the nines with neon glitter glue. That, she could’ve most certainly done without. 

“And don’t even get me started on these shoes!,” Anastasia added whilst inspecting her favourite black YSL pumps that had each been turned into their own very unique glitter glue masterpiece. The look on her face when she’d been presented with them had made Kamilah choke on her morning coffee so much that cappuccino had trickled out of her nose. “My outfits will be unmatched!”

“We were going to make some of those plain purses better with paint,” Jax said as he popped one of the Lindt chocolates that Serafine had helped them buy into his mouth. “But Auntie Serafine said that the point of those bags is to be simple but classy.”

“Uncle Adrian choked on his tea when we told them our plan, actually,” Zahra sighed, “but Auntie Lily said it was an awesome idea and that we should film your reaction if we did it— and for saying that Auntie Serafine rolled up her copy of Vogue and hit her on the head. It was really funny.”

She and Anastasia cast one another a highly alarmed glance and Kamilah cleared her throat before speaking. “You... were going to paint on our Birkins?”

Zahra nodded. “I thought the white one would look cool with Olaf from Frozen on it— and we were even going to let you use some of our lucky keychains from our school backpacks to make them look even more cool.”

“I was going to make a butterfly from my handprints on the blue one and then paint some clouds with glitter on them,” Jax beamed. “And we were going to make the black one Star Wars themed with aliens!”

She didn’t know what to say to that.

None of the parenting books had prepared her for this.

“Well I’m glad you didn’t... we wouldn’t want people getting too jealous of our new style when they see us wearing all the other items from our closet that you improved for us,” Anastasia giggled. “And don’t even get me started on all the jewellery you made us— people wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if we also had such beautiful purses.”

“Indeed,” she nodded, still somewhat dazed by the news that their Birkins had almost been defaced. She wasn’t even a handbag loving woman... but she could certainly appreciate a Birkin. 

“That’s why we decorated the garden instead, so only we can see it!,” Jax said excitedly.

The softest little smile twitched at the corners of Kamilah’s lips as she studied her surroundings. The sun was shining brightly overhead, bringing out the garden that now looked like something out of a Van Gogh acid trip. Every available inch of patio around the swimming pool and the play area had been meticulously coloured with sidewalk chalk, with childish handwritten messages of love printed in every language they’d begun teaching their children; English, Russian, Kazakh, Coptic, and French. Even her large stone plant pots containing very expensive rare flowers hadn’t been spared a psychedelic redecorating.

Once upon a time, such an ambitious art project would’ve stressed her out— or, rather, such a collection of art projects would’ve tipped her over the edge entirely and heads would’ve most certainly rolled. Regardless of how heartfelt and well meaning they may have been.

However, as Adrian frequently and obnoxiously pointed out at every available opportunity, she had gone unapologetically soft for her beloved family. She may not have been one of those parents who bragged incessantly about their children, who forced them to recite the alphabet backward or sing to horrified dinner guests. One of those parents who told people who were not interested and hadn’t asked what their progeny's grade-point average was, what school they went to, or how beautiful and brilliant and psychic they were. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t unspeakably proud of them at all times— even when one of her most precious daggers that had saved her life many a time wound up as a sparkly bit of collateral damage in the name of Mother’s Day.

How could she possibly be mad, sitting under the midday sun with her three most beloved people in the entire world? Being a parent was dirty and scary and beautiful and hard and miraculous and exhausting and thankless and joyful and frustrating all at once. It was everything... and nothing short of a life-or-death disaster presenting itself could sour this day in her eyes. An entire day dedicated to swimming and doing absolutely nothing but spending time together in the sunshine— it was nothing short of absolute bliss.

Like many parents within the community, they were making the most out of their daylight rings on this day. For the first time ever, their social media pages were filled with images of vampire families basking in the sun on this unseasonably warm day... simply making the absolute most out of the pleasure of one another’s company.

Even now, as most of the intense muggy heat of the day had started retreating from Manhattan, and the city, which had drowsed through the height of the hot afternoon, was finally coming alive once more. The streets far below them were filled with people drinking iced drinks and gossiping, laughing, and visiting friends. Old mortals played chess on boards set up outside cafes; children played their own games on the sidewalks. 

It seemed most of Manhattan had been as determined as them to enjoy the day.

“I think Raines Corp has to make waterproof glitter and macaroni so that you guys don’t have to take off your necklaces to swim,” Jax said as he ran across the pool deck and did a front flip into the deep end of the swimming pool, narrowly missing Zahra sitting on her prized dolphin float — that no one was allowed to touch under the threat of their eyeballs being gouged from their skulls.

“Yeah,” Zahra said. “I think you should do that so you never have to take them off.”

Anastasia rose from beneath the crystal clear water, finding footing on the bottom of the pool. The water came up to just below her breasts and her wet bikini top stuck to her body. Kamilah’s gaze snagged on her chest immediately... and Anastasia knew it, if her quiet laughter and very purposeful rearrangement of her hair to reveal more of her cleavage was anything to go by. 

Evidently, she’d lost her knack for the art subtlety where she was concerned long ago.

Not that she cared. Her wife was the most beautiful woman in the world and she’d have shouted that fact from the rooftops without a second thought. She was a wonder to look at and she was the only person who could stare as much as she wished without it being impolite. She was indescribably, perfectly beautiful in her eyes. It seemed as if she glowed and was radiant and sucked up every ray of sun and sparkle of water; Kamilah found she had no interest looking anywhere else when she saw her like this.

“You heard the bosses,” she quipped as she pulled her wife into her arms in the water. “Get your underlings on that immediately.”

“My underlings?,” Anastasia huffed. “I made us bloody daylight rings by myself and sent Elon Musk running with his tail between his legs when I decided I could do space better than him! I think I can handle a waterproof coating that will last forever for our macaroni necklaces.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it!,” Jax teased, splashing them playfully before turning to float on his back. He then heaved a happy sigh, his eyes blissfully closed, as if nothing in his five years had ever gone wrong.

“We have super special Clan Sayeed brands which means we’re yours,” Zahra said, pointing to the small circular brand on the back of her neck that was concealed beneath a wild array of wet hair. Unlike the other members of her clan, Kamilah had ensured that her wife and children’s brands marking them as hers were ever so slightly different than the norm. An extra circle had been added within the outer circle of the design, signifying their rank and importance to her — making it clear that anybody who so much as looked at them the wrong way had a death wish. “And you two,” she continued, “have macaroni necklaces which means you’re ours.”

“Ah, so we’re part of your clan then?,” Kamilah snorted.

“Yes,” Zahra nodded. “Clan... Rainbow Sparkle.”

“Clan Rainbow Sparkle?,” Anastasia echoed. “That’s a great clan name. Absolutely terrifying.”

“I dare say our enemies would flee the battlefield at the mere sound of our name,” Kamilah nodded in agreement.

“Yeah, cause we’d have psychic abilities, thousands of daggers, and lightsabers— which you still have to make us at Raines Corp, by the way,” Jax beamed. 

“You heard the clan leaders,” she said to Anastasia. “We wish for lightsabers at once.”

Anastasia snorted. “I’ll get right on that after the waterproof glitter and macaroni, the time machine that was requested over breakfast, the alien translator that they discussed last night, and the real Iron Man suits that they want for their sixth birthday— and don’t even get me started on what they think would be a great present for your birthday this year—“

“Do I even want to know?,” she chuckled.

“Remember the Percy Jackson books we read them at bedtime a few months ago?,” Anastasia asked. “And there was the really bad movies you tolerated for all of ten minutes before hitting the wine— well, they want to make you your own lightning bolt like Zeus.”

She didn’t even bother to restrain her laughter. “Do we really just watch every available movie and decide every weapon would be the perfect gift for me?”

“That’s exactly what we do,” nodded Anastasia. “The idea of an Elder Wand, a castle in The Underworld like Hades, the actual sword in the stone from the tales of King Arthur, Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth, a freeze ray, and the weapons they use in Black Panther have also been requested—“

“A castle in The Underworld?”

“So you can listen to the screams of Santa stabbing imbeciles impaled on your daggers for eternity, apparently... Zahra’s words, not mine,” Anastasia laughed. “She thinks it’d be a soothing track to add to the white noise playlist we have for when they’re upset.”

“I— I quite literally do not have a response for that,” she stammered before burying her face in her shoulder to stifle her laughter. “I know we said it the moment we discovered your pregnancy, that no child of ours would ever have a ‘normal’ set of interests... but bloody hell. All those novels that we invested in did not prepare us for this in the slightest.”

“That is all you, by the way,” laughed Anastasia whilst stroking her damp hair. “She may look like me but the personality and the general extraness is all you.”

“Indeed! Thank god Jax is as easygoing as you are— the very idea of two people with my temperament going through puberty at the same time is enough to give me nightmares.”

They shared a laugh and turned to watch as the children had a competition to see who could hold their breath the longest beneath the surface of the water— and a content smile settled on Kamilah’s face as she recalled how she and Lysimachus had played the very same game each and every time they’d gone swimming right up until they’d reached adulthood.

It seemed just yesterday that she and Anastasia had begun this phase of their lives, yet looking at how the children had grown was a wonderful thing. She knew most parents felt a degree of sadness when their children began to grow... but all she felt was joy. To her, it had been a privilege to witness them growing from squishy little newborns, to bounding toddlers, and now into children with their own personalities, desires, thoughts, feelings, and morals— to see them becoming more and more independent.

That was proof she and Anastasia were doing their job right. Kids, after all, did not stay with you if you did it right. Parenthood was the one job where, the better you were at it, the more surely you would not be needed in the long run. Their job was to teach them the quiet words of kindness, and to live beyond themselves. To urge them toward excellence, drive them toward gentleness, to pull them deep into themselves, pull them upward toward adulthood, but softly like an angel arranging clouds. To let their spirits move through them softly.

After all, children were only as brilliant as their parents allowed them to be — any mistakes made at such a critical age could have disastrous effects that would last well into their lives... and the last thing the wanted was to lump them with any issues they’d have to work through.

Having kids — the responsibility of rearing good, kind, ethical, responsible vampires — was the biggest job anyone could ever embark on. As with any risk, you had to take a leap of faith and ask lots of wonderful people for their help and guidance. Parenthood was one of the hardest things Kamilah had ever done — if not the hardest thing in over two thousand years of life — but in exchange it had taught her the meaning of unconditional love.

And she’d never been happier.

~~~~ five years earlier ~~~~

Sat in the living room of the penthouse she’d had built as the crowning jewel of her skyscraper that stood out against the Manhattan skyline, Kamilah’s entire soul seemed to be shining. For decades this place had been so empty that only three people besides herself had set foot in it. She had been so alone and unattached from the world that she’d retreat here and stay hidden for days at a time.

Yet here she sat in the very same room that had once been so silent the only sound had been her heartbeat, with her wife and her babies. With her family.

Anastasia was nestled against her side with Zahra cradled in the crook of her right arm and a bottle of B-Positive blood in her left hand, whilst she fed Jax his daily dose of mortal blood to ensure good health. They each looked a frightful mess and it had been days since they’d last had any significant period of uninterrupted sleep... but Kamilah had never been happier.

She loved her children, instantly. Of course, most parents loved their children instantly and that wasn’t something unique to her at all. But she still found it a remarkable thing. She often liked to say that she had been enraptured by her wife the moment she set eyes upon her... but this was something entirely different and it extended to her, too. This was what Adrian had told her about.

Where was this sort of love before? Where did she acquire the ability to love like this from? The way it was suddenly there in her heart as if it had always been there, total and complete, as sudden as grief, but in reverse, was one of the wonders about being alive.

She wasn’t even sure Anastasia understood what a gift she'd just given her. She was the one she'd searched for her entire life. She was the one she hadn't believed could possibly exist. She had strength, a backbone of steel, and yet she could put herself in her arms and give her what she needed in their relationship— she was incredible.

“I thought they’d cry more getting their brands,” Kamilah yawned as she rested her head against her wife’s shoulder, an affectionate little headbutt. “Most other infants born into my clan make a terrible fuss.”

Anastasia laughed softly as she shifted Zahra against her shoulder in order to burp her, revealing the circular brand on the back of her neck. 

It was up to the new parents where they wished for their children to be branded and they’d chosen the backs of their neck because the marks could both be easily displayed with pride and concealed at a moment’s notice, if need be. 

“When you’re branded you feel closer to the one whose blood is inked into your skin, I think they just felt fascinated to have that connection with you,” Anastasia replied, her heavy eyelids blinking languidly in her exhaustion. “Other infants don’t know you like they do. For nine months you’ve been at my side, talking to my belly on a daily basis, and everyday since they were born a week ago you’ve been right here at our sides. They know you very, very well... so I think they felt safe when they felt that connection— I mean, that’s what I felt when I was branded.”

She leaned in and pressed her lips to her wife’s brow. “I’m not even suffering the post-pregnancy and breastfeeding hormones and I’ll burst into tears if you continue this flattery.”

Anastasia huffed in amusement. “It’s only fair when you’ve been flattering me so much when I’ve felt gross and been so moody— and how good you’ve been since we’ve got home from the hospital. Not just with the babies but with how fragile I still feel.”

“It’s what I’m here for,” she assured her as she manoeuvred Jax against her shoulder and began to burp him. 

The days since coming home had been a daze, in the most wonderful way. The family had been checking up on them each day and running their errands for them so that they didn’t have to leave home, and they’d even had Mathew and Tyler over to visit. But other than those closest to them, nobody was allowed to penetrate their little bubble.

The clans and the mortal media had all been informed of their births and their names, but that was all they were getting for now. They’d turned down spreads worth millions of dollars in almost every major magazine and received congratulatory gifts from many world leaders— everybody seemed to be salivating as they waited on them to reveal any details they were willing to share with the world. Not only were the children basically the equivalent of vampire royalty, they were the blood heirs of two of the world’s most successful companies... so it was understandable that people were curious.

However, they planned to spend a good long while in their blissful domestic seclusion in New York before flying to Egypt to enjoy the holiday villa that Anastasia had commissioned as her push present. One throwaway comment about how she wanted their children to feel connected to Egypt had inspired her wife to buy the very plot of land that her parents vacation home had once stood on, and to have architects recreate the very Roman style villa her father had designed and built for her mother by the sea in which she’d spent the earliest and happiest days of her childhood — with all the modern conveniences needed to make their lives as luxurious as possible while they were there. 

The place was in her blood, her bones, and her soul. Perhaps it was that siren song that called to her when she saw the edge where the water met the sky. Perhaps it was the peacefulness of the Egypt itself... or the memories waiting for her to rediscover there. She didn't know... but she was unspeakably touched by her wife’s gesture.

The Bloodkeeper had even gone as far as to have Raines Corp to recreate many long lost pigments to recreate the exact works of art and mosaics her parents had commissioned for their home. And she’d had the natural pond that her father had once swam in on the property recreated, all the way down to the paradisiacal lagoon that lay below the surface of the water. 

The pictures she’d seen of it were exactly how she recalled it from her childhood. Back then the water had been an unbelievable, unreal turquoise, its surface so still that every feature of the bottom could be admired in magnified detail: colourful pebbles, bright red kelp, fish as pretty and colourful as the native Egyptian birds that decorated the artworks and embroidery in the house. A natural waterfall on the far side had fallen softly from a height of at least twenty feet. A triple rainbow had often graced its frothy bottom on particularly sunny days. Large boulders stuck out of the water at seemingly random intervals, black and sun-warmed and extremely inviting, and when she had been a child she liked to imagine that they had been placed there on purpose by some ancient giant.

And though she had only seen pictures of their villa, she already knew it would be a place she’d feel a great deal of happiness. A place, perhaps, that many years from now she and her beloved would sit side-by-side as grandmothers holding their descendants on their laps under the stars and whispering in their ears that the lights in the sky were holes in the floor of the heavens... just has her own grandmother had done in the very same spot that their villa now stood.

“When we leave for Egypt we should take some of your ancestor’s belongings that I got back for you,” Kamilah murmured, her tired eyes focusing on the Imperial Russian artefacts meticulously boxed up across the unusually messy living room. “That way it’ll be a place where both of our histories meet and blend together.”

Anastasia smiled softly at the idea, her glacial eyes brimming with tears once more as she regarded the possessions that had been abandoned as her ancestors fled the Bolshevik revolution in Russia to avoid assassination. Kamilah had seen to it that the most prominent auction houses and museums in the world bolstering Romanov and Yusupov artefacts be offered financial donations that they couldn’t refuse whenever she’d found something meaningful that she knew her wife would want. Whether it was something as small as a worn old novel inscribed with a personal handwritten message inside the cover, or a photo album filled with black and white images, or something as outrageously expensive as a painting or a one of a kind Fabergé creation... she’d done all she could to procure it— not only so that Anastasia could have that connection with her past, but so that their children could too.

Even though they hadn’t discussed each other’s push presents beforehand, it seemed that they’d been thinking along the very same lines when they’d opened their wallets.

“I still can’t believe you got me the Flameng painting of Zinaida Yusupova,” Anastasia sighed happily. “How did you even manage that?”

“The Hermitage museum and I have had a fairly longstanding relationship. I’ve helped them on a number of business deals throughout the years,” she shrugged, her eyes drifting to the painting of the woman in the pink gown as she stroked their son’s dark hair. “I hadn’t truly realised how much you look like her until now though— in the bone structure and the eyes, at least.”

Anastasia laughed softly and stroked the copper hair framing Zahra’s face. “At home in Kazakhstan people always said I looked more like my Russian ancestors than anything else— I think I look more like her in childhood photos, there are a few of her that literally could be me in old fashioned dresses.”

She shook her head. “I see a definite resemblance in the painting, too. Were her hair red and she much thinner than she is there, this could easily have been an artistic impression of you, had you aged past twenty-two. You can tell she was at least a few years older when it was painted.”

“She sat for François Flameng in 1894, so she would’ve been thirty-three,” Anastasia said without missing a beat, her eyes never leaving the painting. “She died in 1939 but I remember some super old relatives and family friends who actually knew her commenting that we had very similar personalities.”

“They both have her eyes,” she commented. “Your eyes.”

“Didn’t Ekaterina Alexeievna have blue eyes, too?,” Anastasia teased.

Kamilah glared at her. “You are related to Catherine The Great very distantly on only one side of your family. It’s not like I purposely kept it in the family and there is no physical resemblance between the two of you—“

“You told me once when you were drunk that I carry myself the same way she did,” laughed Anastasia. “And you said something about the face I make when I’m unimpressed with something... I’m too tired to remember your exact words but I was something along the lines of: ‘I swear on all that is holy that one look at your face right now is a window into the past and I will not stand for it—‘ Then you tried to stand up and fell flat on your face.”

“Yes, well, I think we all know Drunk Kamilah says and does things she ought to be hung, drawn, and quartered for.” She let out a bewildered laugh. “But she always knows what she’s talking about. As a leader you have most certainly inherited her warrior’s spirit and her ability to build and carry an archaic empire into a golden age of prosperity — though you are a great deal fairer and understanding of those ranking beneath you than she was. Her eyes were indeed also blue, they were much duller than yours. Though you certainly have a similar air about you, a confidence that can’t be taught and a natural carelessness to the way you breeze through life that somehow seems oddly graceful... and that one particularly unamused glare of yours— and I appear to be so sleep deprived I am digging myself into a hole which there is no climbing out of.”

“Your Mama is very dramatic,” Anastasia cooed to Zahra as she happily gurgled away in her arms. “And despite what she says, she most definitely kept it in the family because she has a thing for smart women with bad attitudes who don’t hesitate to call her out when she’s being a drama queen. She likes it when people are brave enough to argue with her and smart enough to win when she’s in a mood.”

“I didn’t even know she was related to you at all until I figured out on my own exactly who your family were— and getting you to open up about your ancestry at all was like drawing teeth!”

“Guys I was friends with in high school figured out I am related to the bisexual legend that killed Ra Ra Rasputin and sang Boney M to me all the time— and I mean all the time! Literally everyday I was reminded of Russia’s greatest love machine and that shit was traumatic,” Anastasia giggled. “After that I got so sick of people knowing I never spoke of anyone other than the family that eventually settled in Kazakhstan... and because they treated me badly I just didn’t enjoy talking about them.”

She held Jax in front of her face and their little boy smiled at her. “Your Mommy can be rather insufferable when she wishes to be and I fully intend to one day have you as my ally on this subject. You will one day tell her that I unequivocally did not intend to be some sort of freak intent on bedding multiple generations of one family.”

“You’re going to tell our kids you banged their great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother who died 201 years before I was born?,” Anastasia snorted. “Wow. I’m looking at you in a whole new light, Sayeed— even though I may have either missed or added an extra great or two in that. I’m so tired I can’t even recall my own family tree properly.”

She snorted. “Make no mistake, were our children not in our arms at the present moment I would be chasing you around the living room firing every pillow within my arms reach directly at your face for this slander— but I’m also too tired to move. So consider yourself lucky.”

Anastasia smirked at her. “Which one of us was the better lover?”

“STOP,” she gasped, burying her face into her shoulder in a pitiful attempt to conceal her mortification. “Annie, without one hint of overreacting, you are the single most incorrigible individual I have ever met. You are utterly and infuriatingly incorrigible in every way— I should be awarded a sainthood for enduring this torment!”

“Okay, drama queen, okay,” laughed Anastasia. “I may not have any of the kinky furniture she had but I bet I am much better in bed.” 

Indeed, she was... not only in her skilled ministrations but in the fulfilment she provided her with. Kamilah was a woman with a very complicated personality and past and it took a certain type of person to understand her well enough to make her feel safe in bed. She had a whole host of hidden depths and sexuality that had all went entirely unnoticed before Anastasia.

“I can confirm that your talent for being the single brattiest bottom I have encountered in more than two thousand years of life is not genetic.” She huffed in amusement. “There is nobody I’d rather have bound at my mercy.”

“You enjoy me being a smart ass with the world’s worst attitude problem that much, do you?,” smirked Anastasia. “It’s the accent, isn’t it?”

She gently stroked a long strand of ginger hair out of her face with her free hand and her expression softened considerably. “I evidently have a kink for bratty Kazakh bottoms whose submission must be worked for and earned. It is quite the aphrodisiac when I get you to the point you start muddling your languages, I assure you.”

They both burst into a fit of exhausted high-pitched laughter that teetered on the edge of a sleep deprived delirium, and the sentiment was thoroughly echoed in their babies’ happy little noises as they wriggled in their hold. Even though Jax and Zahra didn’t have the slightest clue what was going on, she could tell they were enjoying her torment just as much as their mother was... which only rendered it all the more sublime.

Eventually their tiredness got the best of them and they retired to their bedroom to rest their aching bodies in a more comfortable place than the living room couch. She watched as Anastasia settled down on the bed with Jax skin to skin on her chest, laying on top of the duvet in the large U-bend of their favourite pregnancy pillow that they hadn’t yet gotten rid of. Kamilah squeezed in beside her, as she had done during the pregnancy, and slipped an arm behind her neck so that she and Zahra were nestled as close to her and Jax as was physically possible.

Their daughter was now laying on her chest and her hand all but covered her tiny body as she stroked her back in that gentle way all loving parents did, bonding with her on the most elemental level. Her free hand gently played in her wife’s messy hair, tickling softly at the roots as they relaxed. Then their son purred, and their daughter made a happy little sound of delight in response, very much like two little kittens in their love of their mothers’ touch.

Kamilah’s eyes drifted closed of their own accord as Anastasia sang to them.

She sang them the traditional Russian and Kazakh lullabies she’d often sang to her whenever nightmares plagued her: immediate, extemporised passages about waves and sunlight and tides and the constant, beautiful pressure of water and moonlight on everything. The glory of trees slowly swaying in a gentle breeze, the delicious sight of stars twinkling in the heavens.

The music came out of her without pause, her angelic voice driven by her years of observing, seeing, listening, enjoying, experiencing the world. The wonder and sadness of being alive. Even though she didn’t write any of the songs, her voice was so hauntingly beautiful it seemed to convey the joy of being a vampire; but also the pain of being the only one like herself — the only vampire who had been as close to a living god as it was possible to be, temporarily, and then lost everything.

She had the voice of the gods, some who had heard her sing had said. The sort of siren soprano voice that could lure men to sea and sailors to their deaths in fairytales, a voice that could launch a thousand ships. She had the voice of the gentle wind and the storm and the crash of the waves against the shore. She had the voice of the moon as it glided serenely across the night sky and the twinkling stars as they danced behind. She had the voice of the wind between the stars that mortals never heard, that rushed and blew and ushered in the beginning and end of time.

That voice was magical when it came to settling two tired infants... and an ancient vampire.

“All the books said that when they sleep, we should sleep,” Anastasia murmured with her eyes closed once both babies had at long last settled into a state of stillness. “So we should definitely sleep.”

Kamilah rested her cheek against her hair and hummed softly in response. “I don’t think I could keep myself awake for much longer, even if I wished to.”

“I love you, Kami.”

“I love you so much, little firefly.”

“Mhm,” Anastasia mumbled, already descending into the depths of sleep.

The sound of her breathing reminded her, as it so often did, of how vulnerable she was despite her power — and how vulnerable their children were. And how vulnerable she and Anastasia now were because of how much they loved them. The fear — that something could happen to any of the three of them at any given moment, something Kamilah would be helpless to stop — could become so omnipresent in her life that she sometimes pictured it growing, like a third arm, out of the centre of her chest unless she managed to relax herself. For wholeness, she had learned, was not the absence of pain entirely, but the ability to hold it.

There was nothing she would not do in order to see them well.

Nothing.

As Kamilah’s eyes drifted closed, she thought back to the day she’d first met her wife at Raines Corp with no idea what would unfold from that very first meeting. Back then, she’d been so lonely that the very idea she’d make it through the next twenty-four hours without giving into the insatiable urge to hurl herself into the sun had seemed like something too miraculous to be true.

Yet here she was, decades later, laying in bed with her family all fast asleep in her embrace. She was safe in their keeping. Happy within herself. No longer lost. No longer alone. And absolutely brimming with a burning passion and drive to live and live well.

How amazing it was to think how a single action could cause a life to veer off in a direction it was never meant to go. Falling in love could do that, Kamilah thought as she started to dose. And so could a woman wandering into a company to interview for a job that she was overqualified for— that could potentially change many people’s lives, and it most certainly had. She marvelled at the way each had the power to forever alter an individual's compass.

And it was the knowing that such a thing could so easily happen, as she truly did not know before, not really, that had fundamentally changed her... and saved her.

~ fin.


End file.
